Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

To speak on this Bill today, we must be honest with ourselves as to where we are and what needs to change but we also need to be honest with ourselves in terms of what needs to be protected and what the benefits are that need to be protected rather than talked down.

If we look at agriculture and the fears in the agriculture community about any climate change or challenges in climate change, we must first acknowledge that those in the farming community have been the custodians of our countryside for many a long decade and century and they have done an exceptionally good job on it. We look at people who have been planting trees and minding the fields, hedgerows and communities of our countryside. As a practising farmer myself, I take great pride in what our farmers have done over the years.

They are also providing food. They are providing excellent produce, which is very green and which is seen as being environmentally friendly the world over. We have to make sure in all the debates that we have at the forefront of our mind that Irish agriculture is probably one of the most green agriculture sectors on the planet. It is being produced with a great deal of regulation that has been put in over the years. We have to ensure that food security. Many decades ago, the European Union was set up in relation to food security. We want to make sure our food is produced to the highest standard, that the people who work every day to produce it are supported and that our industry is supported. That has to be at the very front of it.

One could be forgiven for thinking that agriculture is the sole reason for the challenges we face in terms of climate change and the green agenda but that is not so. As I look around at my own community, I am reminded of the poem by Máirtín Ó Direáin and the lines:

Thóg an fear seo teach

Is an fear úd

Claí nó fál

A mhair ina dhiaidh

Is a choinnigh a chuimhne buan.

When one looks around, one sees the fantastic work that has been done by generations of farmers, by people who planted hedgerows, worked in their communities and enhanced our environment. We should take our hats off to those people and should protect agriculture going forward.

I wish to raise the issues of energy efficiency, the retrofitting of homes and the cost of the energy required to heat homes. The green agenda is a national agenda and it is a challenge for our own Government and for governments the world over. The green agenda will yield long-term benefits for our climate and our planet and, in that context, we must ensure that the retrofitting of homes is a priority for the Government. We must address the long wait for approval under the warmer homes retrofitting scheme and improve the incentives. Many houses built between 40 and 60 years ago need to be retrofitted but the grants that are available do not match the costs involved in retrofitting them to the standard required today. The grants that are available are minuscule. They simply are not sufficient to incentivise people to retrofit their homes. Such retrofitting will benefit the State and will progress the green agenda. If we are serious about this, we must provide proper incentives for people to retrofit their homes.

I welcome the progress made in recent months on the generation of offshore wind energy. This is something that was talked about six or seven years ago but the technology exists today to allow us to generate electricity offshore and bring it on to our island. This is hugely important and will form an important part of the debate in various communities on the sustainability of wind energy.

In recent decades we have pursued a planning policy based on the urbanisation of our society. The policy has been to push economic activity into large urban centres. I have been saying since the day I was elected to the Dáil that this policy is wrong. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. That policy has fundamentally failed, especially in the context of the green agenda being debated here today. On transport, let us consider the number of cars on the road and the fact that many people have to commute long distances for work. That goes against the green agenda. It also goes against the idea of a balanced society and proper regional development. The policy was wrong from the start and some of the people who were driving it were toffee-nosed people who looked down their noses at rural communities. They were not prepared to listen to the debate we were having and to the arguments in favour of balanced regional development. In the past 12 months more has been done for regional development than ever before. Unfortunate as the global Covid-19 pandemic has been, it has forced many people to examine their lifestyles and to reassess the benefits of rural communities. There has been much negative commentary about rural communities in various media but we now have a chance to do the right thing, not just in terms of rebalancing society and advancing the green agenda, but also for the sake of human beings. We have a chance to do something for the person who has spent two or three hours every day commuting to work rather than being able to work in his or her local rural community.

Our rural communities are ready to embrace change. In the context of the green agenda, the climate change agenda and the challenges we face, we must make sure that we are starting from the correct base. We cannot start from the planning policy base of recent decades that holds we must urbanise everything. I fundamentally believe that we have to ruralise everything. We must turn the policy on its head completely. We must ruralise everything on the basis of the benefits that will bring in the context of the green agenda. There has been much talk of digital hubs, rural hubs and people working from home. The great enabler of all of this, of course, is broadband. If we are to properly embrace the agenda we are debating, we must be very serious about rural Ireland and what it can contribute to improving our climate, our planet and the lifestyle of our people.

These are fundamental issues. The contributors to this debate have been very serious and have put a great deal of thought into their contributions. Serious commentators the world over have said that climate change is the biggest issue facing mankind. We have a duty in this country to make sure that we are fully informed as we make decisions on the future. We cannot just look at this issue through the prism of urban centres or the way we have approached planning heretofore. We have to turn it on its head. We have to recognise the good that is in our countryside and we have to protect it. We must recognise the enormous contribution of agriculture the world over. We must protect that and not threaten it further. We must engage on agriculture and make sure that the family farm remains viable. We must make sure there is proper planning and that rural regeneration is our focus. The change of emphasis towards rural Ireland must be maintained. If we are serious about energy, we must put a proper system in place to retrofit homes. This will ensure that people who are less well off will be able to reduce their energy bills and their reliance on fossil fuels.

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate on this Bill. I will contribute again on later stages as the Bill makes its way through the House.

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