Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I was speaking about the issue of governance and accountability when it comes to the climate Bill. This Bill is a motherboard for overall governance and accountability measures that we can apply to hold Government to account, regardless of who is in power. A huge part of the committee report recommendations focused on this issue as well. I welcome the increased accountability measures dotted throughout the Bill as a result of the Minister taking on board the suggestions of the committee. Welcome additions include references to corrective actions where failures occur to meet emission targets, a section on climate reporting and a requirement that the Minister shall, when preparing a climate action plan, ensure that the plan is consistent with the carbon budget programme.

Other welcome aspects of the new Bill include the strengthened role of the Climate Change Advisory Council, CCAC, by increasing its membership from 11 to 14 and a provision that future appointments to the council provide for a greater range of relevant expertise, including ecological expertise, which I was particularly keen would be included. Do these improvements go far enough? Will they ensure that all arms of the State work in tandem to reduce emissions and meet our national and international targets? The reporting lag inherent in the Bill will need to be tackled. The advisory committee has a year after the expiry of a carbon budget to propose a new one. The Minister also has four months to consider and amend the carbon budget and to lay it before the Oireachtas. The Dáil committee may also be set up to consider the carbon budget and make recommendations within two months. Therefore, carbon budgets will be set up based on a previous five-year period, potentially two to three years after the commencement of the relevant period. There is also the issue of too much front-loading on one Department in our response to climate change, rather than the burden being shared equally across all Departments and agencies of the State. We tend to compartmentalise the environment, to set it aside from economic development, transport and roads when it needs to be a core component of everything we do within government and in our governance.

Accountability must also be shared across all Ministers, Departments and agencies. The Taoiseach should take a lead role in ensuring the implementation of the carbon Bill. The Taoiseach needs to show that leadership. We have seen throughout the Covid crisis times where the Government partners have not worked against each other and have not pulled together as one and that has impacted on community support and engagement. We cannot afford to have something like that happening in relation to the climate crisis.

We need to climate proof all existing policies and legislation, including international trade deals, which brings me to the most pressing and urgent issue of the comprehensive economic and trade agreement, CETA. How can we expect to validate this climate action Bill while at the same time the Government is seeking approval for the investor court system despite international comparative analysis revealing the threat these investor courts have on countries' ability to regulate for increased climate and environmental protections? The environmental chapter of CETA is very weak when it comes to legal enforceability in contrast to the strong provisions to protect investors and any references to sustainability, environmental protection, and adherence to international climate agreements are only aspirational and voluntary in nature.

The combination of weak environmental protections, as contained in CETA, and the large pay outs resulting from existing dispute mechanisms to large energy companies, reveal that the environment has the most to lose from the new investor court system which forces national Governments to pull back on ambitious climate action policies and regulations. We have real time and real world examples of this happening and it is not something we can ignore. The threat of being sued under an investor court system of the type created by CETA has the potential to create a chilling effect on Governments' ability or willingness to implement policy in the interest of the public good or the environmental good.

I am happy to see the inclusion of a definition of biodiversity and nature-based solutions and its inclusion in the climate action plan and long-term climate objective, which I have been pushing for since I was first elected. I also welcome that the amendments I tabled to the Nation Oil Reserves Agency (Amendment) and Provision of Central Treasury Services Bill 2020, NORA, have been transposed and will be taken into account in this Bill. That is a really positive move. However, we could, and need to, go further in this regard. There is need for clear objectives in support of the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity at the core of legislation. Other countries, such as Costa Rica, have done this very successfully.That country has managed to provide a broad and multifaceted objective in its legislation which focuses on the integration of biodiversity into policies and the State's decision–making processes. In Ireland, our approach to date has been to develop separate plans, separate reports and separate actions for biodiversity and for climate change. A widening gap is emerging between biodiversity and climate action, with little communication between the two processes and we need to work hard close that gap.

On just transition, other Deputies mentioned that none of this will be achievable if we do not bring on board communities and those who will be most impacted by any climate actions and support them to make the changes they need to make.

The climate committee made a number of very strong suggestions in regard to just transition but, unfortunately, they have not translated into the provisions of the Bill. In fact, there is a significant get-out clause in the section on just transition, with the inclusion of the phrase "in so far as is practicable". That provision needs to be strengthened. We have seen in the media over the past two days that some politicians are scaremongering and causing confusion about the Bill among rural and other communities. We cannot allow that to happen. We must make sure that people understand, first, that this has to be done and these issues must be addressed but that, in doing so, we will not leave them behind and the policies and funding we put in place will focus on those who most need Government support. That is key and it is where we need to be moving in terms of just transition.

We also need to ensure we have significant consultation on policies in this area. This is an issue I raised with the Minister previously in regard to the waste management regulations. There was no poverty-proofing of those provisions. There were 40 people on the stakeholder committee but nobody representing people at risk of poverty and nobody from a grassroots disability perspective. A key consideration must be to make sure we hear those voices when we are developing policies on climate action issues.

Another recommendation of the committee was to have a requirement for public consultation when preparing the long-term national climate action strategy. Democratic participation of civil society has slowly been eroded over time, particularly in terms of the cost of judicial reviews or appeals. Civil society organisations receive a minimal amount of funding and cannot afford to spend it dealing with costlier barriers that make it harder for them to protect and preserve the environment. This is an issue of which we need to be very conscious. Adequate consultation will ensure the action plans are poverty-proofed and just transition is carried out at each stage.

The draft forestry Bill, in its preliminary form, threatened to curb the rights of individuals and environmental organisations to appeal decisions, as a way to address the administrative failings of the current appeals system. This is not how we would envisage just transition. In fact, we should be strengthening the rights of those who guard our natural environment. We should appreciate the work they put into protecting our environment and communities. Democracy and transparency are cornerstones of climate action, which is why the committee's recommendation to include references to the Aarhus Convention is an important one.

We must ensure people on low incomes can afford to meet their minimum energy needs. This can be achieved by ensuring people have an adequate income, benchmarked against energy costs, and controlling the cost of utilities for low-income households, via social tariffs or price caps, as we make the transition to renewable energy. We need to expand access to free energy-efficiency upgrades, focusing on those living in social housing and private rental accommodation, and invest in public transport and rural transport, looking particularly at the potential for free public transport. For example, rolling out things like Local Link infrastructure to facilitate local and rural communities is absolutely vital.

Unfortunately, the current retrofitting programme is not on course to meet the energy needs of those most vulnerable to transition. There is a very long waiting list of people who have applied for a better energy warmer homes grant to retrofit their homes. This disadvantages certain groups of people, including the elderly. To date, 142,000 households have received free upgrades but there are currently 7,800 homeowners waiting for works to be done under the scheme. There is a two-year waiting list from the time someone makes an application to when he or she gets a surveyor visit. I spoke to the Minister about a pensioner constituent of mine in Wicklow who has very little money and had an electricity bill of nearly €900 in February. She will probably have a three-year wait to get that work done. We need to make sure the people who want to make the changes are facilitated to do so quickly.

Legislation may be drafted with all the best intentions but where Ireland consistently falls down is on implementation. The Government continues to delay in developing the necessary legislative framework to allow for green energy to be harnessed, developed and disseminated to households and businesses across the country in line with our 70% target for renewable energy production by 2030. Wind Energy Ireland predicts that we could miss our 2030 targets if existing barriers to planning and grid connections are not resolved quickly enough. That is why the marine planning Bill must be introduced. Again, we need to take into account environmental considerations. Concerns have been expressed that we are putting the cart before the horse in this regard. We have not yet established our marine protected areas and we have not looked ecologically to see which sections of our maritime resource should be protected before we start putting in the infrastructure. I would like to see progress being made in that regard. The Government needs to get to work on the renewable energy support scheme, RESS, auctions and the accompanying guidelines to facilitate these large-scale developments. The Minister also needs to clarify the guidelines for developing community funds for wind energy, which could really benefit local communities. In my constituency of Wicklow, there is a significant number of applications going in for offshore wind farms.

I want to raise the issue of energy-heavy industry, including data centres, which is a sector that continues to grow in Ireland. Data centres are currently responsible for 1.5% of the country's carbon emissions but they are projected to use nearly 30% of Ireland's total energy by 2028. EirGrid has warned that, by 2026, the twin demands of data centres and electric cars could exceed Ireland's energy supply. It cannot be the case that the only real beneficiaries of renewable energy are corporations, with the cost being put onto the State, and onto our climate, if we cannot, as a consequence, meet our emissions and renewable energy targets. We need assurances from Government that our move towards a different energy system will not be compromised by growing energy-heavy industries, our green energy system will serve local communities and our development needs will be met in a sustainable way.

Implementation will be key to all of this and the Bill must be dealt with on an emergency basis. Alongside implementation is the need for the necessary funding to support Departments, agencies and local authorities to implement their climate action plans. The Government has had practice at dealing with a crisis. The impact of Covid can be viewed as a test of the economic disruption we want to avoid as a country as we transition to a zero-carbon economy. We can expect the hallmarks of the pandemic to be carried through a climate emergency, including the need to protect our most vulnerable, apply systemic changes in our economic system and provide proper and effective governance to implement the changes required, with funding allocated to where the needs are greatest.

There is a rhythm and tempo that accompanies legislation as it passes through the Houses of the Oireachtas. That rhythm reflects the urgency the Government assigns to the issues at hand. In the case of this Bill, the tempo of action is out of synch with the reality it attempts to address. This once-in-a-generation, generation-defining legislation has not consistently been progressed with the sense of urgency that climate change and the biodiversity crisis require. The Bill veers towards a safer, more measured rhythm, which is a result of the compromise between the opposing sections of Government. Climate change and biodiversity loss do not care for compromise. Such compromise is what got us here in the first place. It is time now to pick up the pace of action.

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