Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Tá an-áthas orm deis a bheith agam labhairt ar an ábhar fíorthábhachtach seo. Ar ndóigh, is fada atáimid ag caint air seo. Go minic, is mó caint a dhéanaimid agus is mó aer te a chuirimid ar fáil, seachas gníomh. Ní hionann dlíthe a achtú agus gníomh a dhéanamh. Mura ndéanaimid gníomh de réir ár mbriathar, beidh thiar orainn sa deireadh. Caithfimid a bheith cúramach faoin gcaoi ina ndéanaimid gníomh. Cé air a bheidh an t-ualach? Caithfimid a dhéanamh cinnte nach ar na daoine boichte a thitfidh an t-ualach, mar a thiteann go minic. Tiocfaidh mé ar ais chuige sin ar ball mar go minic bítear ag tromaíocht faoi rudaí an-bheag - daoine ag obair le sleánta ag baint ualaigh mhóna - nuair atá dreamanna eile ag déanamh fíorscriosta ollmhóra ar an aeráid. Aontaím go gcaithfimid a bheith neodrach ó thaobh carbóin de. Aontaím leis sin ar dhá chúis. Tá sé ag déanamh dochar don aeráid agus bheadh muid i bhfad níos saibhre dá n-úsáidfeadh muidne na hacmhainní aiceanta, atá amuigh sa bhfarraige go mórmhór, le fuinneamh a ghiniúint seachas a bheith ag iompórtáil ola, gás agus gual le dó. Mar sin, tá ciall ollmhór ó thaobh na haeráide ag baint leis seo ach tá ciall ollmhór ó thaobh na heacnamaíochta ag baint leis freisin.

As I said in Irish, it makes sense to tackle the climate action issue, but I am not as convinced as everyone else that endlessly passing legislation and drawing up plans is the same as delivery. In my view, the past ten years were wasted in that very little has happened. We have not looked at our economic model. We have generated more renewable energy but we are still only at the tip of the iceberg. There has been a lot of talk and hot air. This time, Government needs to act. I will return later to the role of Government in this area.

We cannot, and should not in this House, devolve decision-making to unelected people. To do that deprives the people of their democratic right. The Minister's target of a 51% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 is ambitious. It is a very laudable ambition and one that I support, but I would like to know the concrete measures by which he proposes to do that. By 2050, we want to be neutral in terms of carbon emissions. I agree that that is an international obligation.

I am somewhat intrigued by section 4, which provides for a limitation of liability. It appears to say that when the law is in place, there is no entitlement to financial compensation or remedy if there is a failure to comply or a breach of the Act. I would welcome clarification on what that means.

The thing about climate change is that it requires immediate action with a long-term plan. We need to decide now what we are going to do, but some of the things we decide to do will take time to do. We know how tortuous and slow our planning processes are. We know also how slow it is in the modern world, when all of the studies that have to be completed from an ecological point of view are done and so on, to get things up and running. If we want to see significant results by the end of the decade, we will need to have decided by the end of this year what we are going to do and to have a ten-year plan of where we are going.

I do not like the modern construction of putting in place of an advisory council which Government is afraid to change or question when things that are being proposed will put an unfair burden on the poorest and the most vulnerable in society. Ultimately, it is wise always to take advice from experts, but it is wiser still for politicians to look at the human consequences of the actions proposed by experts and then to make up their own minds as to how the objective can be achieved based on the expert advice, but also based on their own expert knowledge of what affects the most vulnerable in our society or, maybe, disproportionately affects some communities more than others. At the end of the day, Government only is accountable to the people and Government only can be sacked for non-performance or unfair burdens and inequities, not expert bodies who always conveniently disappear nuair a thagann an crú ar an tairne.

I note that every county is to have a plan, but many of the things we need to do are much bigger than counties. I will speak more about this later. It is fine that every county would have a climate action plan as part of its local plan, but here again ultimately plans are now dictated not by local elected politicians but by the regulator and what it believes the law says. We will discuss that again another day.

Whereas micro and individual action is important, this problem is much bigger than that. If we are really going to tackle it, we must have large-scale production of energy. One of the big challenges if we are going to have data centres in this country is that we will have to fuel them renewably. It would be a total contradiction in terms if it was not an absolute condition that all new data centres be 100% carbon neutral. There are many ways they could achieve that, including by investing in the renewable sector. We cannot on the one hand allow the consumption of large quantities of energy and on the other hand expect a micro action such as somebody putting a solar panel on an individual house to mitigate against that.

If we are to have a big economy, we will have to have big carbon neutral energy. We will have to decarbonise all of our transport fleet. I do not go along with the popular theory that we are not going to go anywhere and that the only places people will go will be places they can get to on public transport. I do not think that is realistic. I do not think it is necessary. I believe we should 100% decarbonise the fleet through the use of renewable electric. The use in the grid varies during the day. Most people do not do huge mileage in a day and, therefore, can recharge their vehicles at night when the demand is low and there is surplus energy available from renewable sources. By using hydrogen and other new technologies that are coming on stream, this is possible.

We all know what happened in the UK when oil was found off the coast of Scotland. We are sitting on something much better than oil, something that has endless energy within, namely, the wind, the wave and the tide.

That is our nuclear energy except that it is safe and does not pollute. We are probably one of the most advantaged countries in the world in terms of natural resources. We have a huge coastline and we will have to use it. Mar a dúirt mé ar ball, caithfimid déanamh cinnte de nach leagfar a t-ualach ar na daoine beaga. Ar an gcéad dul síos ní oibreoidh sé agus ar an dara dul síos tá sé mífhéaráilte.

I will give a few examples. We introduced lower taxation on cars with lower emissions. I was agreeable to that at the time and have no issue with it. The problem is that the people who are still driving the cars that predate the low tax are the poor people who cannot afford to buy newer cars and are, therefore, paying an unfair burden every year, even though many of them do not do much mileage. We are all the time saying we are going to use the carbon tax to insulate homes for poorer people. I have great doubts about its efficiency and effectiveness in this regard. For the poor people in my constituency, who live in the worst houses, it is not insulation they need but a total renovation of their home. When they apply for insulation, they are told the house is too bad to insulate. They cannot get the money from anywhere.

I was contacted by the people on the Aran Islands - the Minister will be interested in this - who said they were given a great scheme except it is not workable. They cannot access the scheme, get the money or get the builders. Many schemes that are meant to offer compensation do not work for the little people, but we still salve our conscience by telling ourselves we are looking after them. I am a great believer gur fearr daoine a mhealladh seachas iad a cháineadh agus pionós a ghearradh orthu. I believe that the proposition of encouraging and enticing people and making it economical for them to do the right thing is way more efficient than taxing and penalising them. However, I am not sure this is really what will happen. As I said, many of the schemes that came out in recent years are great in theory but when you start checking the number of successful applications and the bureaucracy involved, you find that very little has changed.

From talking recently to the people on the Aran Islands, I think there is potential for an all-island policy, involving Rathlin Island and all the islands off the coast, to make them carbon neutral. The islanders have been wanting to do that for years. The Minister might remember that a few trial electric vehicles were put on the islands some time back. After making inquiries, I learned that there is a significant number of such vehicles in use there but, in general, the cost of buying them to travel 5 or 6 miles of road on the largest island and 1 or 2 miles of road on the smaller islands is not economical. I should be talking in kilometres but I am sure the Minister will understand. It would be very easy to decarbonise the islands totally. I note there is no provision for small renewable energy projects in the Galway county plan, but still we lecture people. These are people who want to do it and have their own energy co-operative. They are co-operative but I am not so sure the State and its agents are.

It is very interesting how things work out. We banned peat briquettes and now we find turf coal briquettes in all the shops, some of which come from eastern Europe. They have to travel halfway across Europe before they can be used. I have to say that, in terms of burning, there is no comparison with our own brand. Surely fossil fuels are fossil fuels and we have not really done much to reduce the total footprint of carbon in the form of turf or turf coal briquettes.

I understand a maritime area Bill is to be introduced this year. That legislation is needed and it must provide for quick, fair and definitive decision-making in regard to maritime planning. We need to make sure the State gets a benefit from this but we also need to encourage development. My understanding - I am sure it is part of the Minister's plan - is that up to 6 GW of energy is in planning for the east coast. In fact, I understand planning has been given for 2 GW and the remainder is in a process. This would be a considerable contribution to the electricity needs of this city. I understand there is talk of putting 30 GW offshore in floating wind power, which has the attraction that it would be located reasonably well offshore and would not, therefore, be in anybody's face. In fact, the reality is, and I remember the Minister talking about this ten years ago, that if we had the proper interconnection between here and Britain and between here and continental Europe, we could become a major exporter of carbon-free energy. In other words, we could have negative net carbon as a result of providing carbonless fuel to both Britain and continental Europe. That is where we should be going, using our resources just as we used our resources quite well in previous generations.

I am a great believer in technology. If we want to make cars safer, all the driver training will not be half as effective as new technology that helps to avoid accidents. We know that very well from the past. When it comes to energy, technology is now in use that overcomes many problems, such as the challenges of dealing with the issue of surplus energy at one stage and a shortage of energy in another period because of the intermittent wind. We also know the better the grid we build, the more we can work on the basis that if it is not windy in one place, it inevitably will be windy somewhere else. There is an endless amount we can do, but talking about it, passing Bills and drawing up plans is not doing it. We need action.

There are communities in Ireland that are carbon positive but they are often the communities that are most blamed and penalised for any fossil fuels they use. I am talking about communities such as Connemara where, yes, we use motor cars - please God, in the future we will use electric vehicles - but if you add up the sums, that is offset to a much greater degree compared with our city neighbours anywhere in the country because we produce a huge amount of renewable energy within our community in the form of wind energy, way in excess of what we consume. We are net exporters of renewable energy versus the amount of fossil fuel we bring in, but we never get any credit for putting up with the windmills.

We need new regulations on windmills requiring that they be set back further from houses. We need to recognise they are getting taller and taller and are an unfair burden on the host communities. We need to make sure the gain is for that host community and not for some community far away. I understand that with the renewable electricity support scheme, RESS, when you contact the Department, the officials are totally non-specific as to the neighbourhood in which the so-called secure community partner has to be located. It could be a community at the other end of a county like Galway that would get the benefit without having the pain.

We are not going to tolerate that and we should not have to do so. Ní chuirfimid suas leis agus ba chóir a bheith dearfa cinnte de sin. Caithfear déileáil leis na ceisteanna seo agus creidiúint a thabhairt do na pobail atá sásta leis na tuirbíní gaoithe, atá ag ligean do mhór-ghiniúint leictreachais tarlú ina bpobail féin agus ag an am céanna go bhfuil pionós á ghearradh orthu i ngeall ar chúpla beithíoch agus caoirigh a bheith acu, agus carr a bheith ag an teach acu. Ní ghlacfar leis sin níos mó.

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