John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Maybe I will take up from where Deputy Harkin left off in the context of policy coherence and the value of this Bill. The Bill itself is timely. It is a Bill that has gone through committee scrutiny successfully. In the course of that it has invited various other recommendations and no doubt in the course of the Committee Stage, more ideas and inputs will be brought forward and made, which is to be welcomed.

I want to examine the impact of the Bill on various sectors. Agriculture comes to mind first. We have a lot of farmers, indeed a lot of people, involved in all sorts of agricultural activity who are willing to participate fully in achieving the best possible goals for the environment in doing the right thing by the next generation. I have a great deal of respect for the farming community and what it has achieved to date. It has looked after the countryside. As is often said in this House, the farming community have been the custodians of rural Ireland. Farmers need to be recognised for that in a very positive way. Over the past ten years, the Government has set about encouraging farmers and family farms to go in a particular direction, namely, to develop their herd numbers and dairy units and all of this resulted in a significant cost to them. Some of them have invested up to €500,000 because this is what the policy of Government has been up to now. If we are to change that then it cannot be a dramatic change or an immediate change, and it must be supported by a serious level of funding that will comfortably move the farming community in a different direction. I have no doubt but that the community will co-operate fully, as I have seen that right across rural Ireland within farming communities. However, I have seen a lack of support and understanding from the Government in the context of the support, financial and otherwise, and assistance the community needs to continue to have viable family farm units from which a decent living can be made. That relates not just to their activities, be they dairy or otherwise; it relates to the types of vehicle and machinery they are using, the cost of that machinery and the cost to change that machinery to a more acceptable fuel that will do the job at the same time as being kind to the environment and supportive of the farmer. That is going to cost a huge amount.

Regarding credit for the maintenance of hedgerows and the biodiversity in them, I do not think enough is being said about that. These are the small things that have made a huge difference to rural Ireland and the environment and have been the result of a substantial contribution by the farming community. Not enough is being said about that from Europe, which is more interested in the bureaucracy of the schemes it puts in place, which are beneficial to the farming community but also very heavy in terms of the bureaucracy and red tape they require people to engage in. That is regrettable because all of that costs significant money, which could be better spent going directly into the farming businesses the families are engaged in. As such, first and foremost in this Bill we have to protect rural Ireland and to protect the direction those who live in rural Ireland want to go in, while at the same time being sympathetic to the cause of having a better and greener environment, and one that is sustainable and understanding.

My own background is in transport. The transport industry has done a lot to try to comply with the various upgrades of engine and type of engine, including the use of AdBlue and the other bigger engines that are available, to ensure that they are doing their bit to save the environment. However, at what cost? Like those in farming, they are not making sufficient profits to be able to casually invest in the newer type of machinery they will want to assist the Government in meeting those targets and, therefore, they will need assistance. As trucks leave Ireland and go to the Continent, they have that long journey to go on and if we are going to ask them to have the type of engines that are required to meet the targets, they will need support for that.

Transport and agriculture are two areas that are hugely labour-intensive. A transport operator is not just someone who sits in a truck; it is hugely labour-intensive, even down to the on-time delivery of the parcels everyone is now buying online. At present, electric vehicles and their technology do not necessarily suit the operator to change to. This is, first, because they cannot cover the distances and, second, because of cost. Again, it comes down to money.

I am not arguing against the Bill but we must have tangible supports that are real and meaningful to the sectors we are going to directly affect. The Government must consider the individual, particularly those who currently cannot afford fuel and who are having real, serious difficulty heating their old homes. Will grants be more easily accessible? Will they be greater than what is there at present? Will they do the job without bringing poverty and hardship to people who really want to do something for the planet but who in their own lives do not have the resources necessary to give them a place in what will be a new society and a new economy through greening the country? Those individuals will, therefore, need supports to properly insulate their homes, to properly change the fuel that they use and to do so in a sensible and pragmatic way. I refer in particular to any changes that will bring about the type of poverty that older people are currently experiencing. All of us have encountered cases our constituencies of individuals and elderly couples who have been unable to heat their homes and who are worried about the future and their homes. The heroes here are talking in grand terms about the climate change Bill and other matters and the people I mention are not part of that conversation because they believe they cannot afford to be part of it. If we are to be inclusive and to have policies that are properly connected in the context of their deliverables, then those people must be included too.

Costs are huge and they must be considered.

Communities were mentioned and the cornerstone of Ireland and its development has always been around the strength of its community. It is about how strong a community is in terms of advocacy, infrastructure for families or development. They must be supported. I listened carefully to an individual on the Joe Duffy radio show yesterday making the case for a friend of his who rents bicycles. We were talking about the just transition but I heard what happened to that man's business when Bord na Móna put the service to tender after 11 years. He constructed the business and actively engaged with the community on a tangible level. He brought the community with him in his business of hiring bicycles so people could see the park and enjoy the basic activities we are now enjoying. That business was taken from him; that is not a just transition - it is anything but. We must address that.

I will turn to what would be happening now if we had no climate change Bill or discussion in the House about it. Local authorities are continuing to pollute the waters of this country by allowing raw sewage and other contaminants to go into rivers. They are not doing a great deal about this because they are looking for funding to deal with the problem. Until we address the matters causing problems, we will have difficulty in addressing what we want to in order to achieve the ambitious targets being set out by the Minister. I caution him against enshrining matters in law today that may have to be changed very quickly after the enactment of the Bill.

I will speak again to what is wrong with today's economy. We can see how busy are the quarries and there are legitimate quarries doing legitimate business under a legitimate planning application. I have no difficulty with the businesses meeting those conditions. There are illegal quarries in Kilkenny and Laois in particular that do not have planning permission. They have escaped the law and the county council bringing them back to being a lawful and registered quarry. I have raised this question in the House with the Taoiseach and I am raising it directly with the Minister now. I ask him in the interests of the countryside to look at those quarries that are breaking the law now and causing untold destruction to nature. They are operating without any licence or proper planning permission. Will the Minister investigate these cases in Laois and Kilkenny and find out what is happening with those quarries that are breaking the law? What is happening with the citizens making the complaints about the law being broken? What can we do about the banks and vulture funds that currently own some of those quarries and which are turning a blind eye to the asset being stripped, taking no action to support the local communities?

These are real issues for today and yet we in the Dáil tend to ignore them. If I raise them with the Minister by way of parliamentary question, I am told it is a matter for the county council. That may be the case but it is a matter for this House when the law breaks down and the council is not being given the full support and resources of the State to battle some of these individuals breaking the law. I am not painting everybody with the one brush but there is a small number of people causing devastation in local communities to the environment we are trying to protect with this Bill. It is scandalous.

The law is there and I hope we are not passing another law that will be ignored. I wish the Minister well with the Bill but when a matter is raised like this in the House, as I have done on two or three occasions, the Minister who is listening should at least have the interest to check it out and follow up. I have followed up some of these particular queries on quarries and I am shocked that it takes so long to stop the individual from breaking the law. There is considerable damage done in that short period to the environment.

When the community we are trying to represent sees there is little impact from the complaints they make, people lose faith in politicians and the system. Authority may then break down and people might think if certain others can take a short cut because they have money, they can take a short cut too. People living in rural Ireland do not want to do this. The Minister has heard me asking and I plead with him to respond on this. Maybe it will not be today but he can do it in writing. I ask him to tell me what can be done to support the councils dealing with such matters.

Planning has been mentioned with regard to local government. In order to support rural Ireland and rebuild the villages and towns devastated by the financial crash, Covid-19 and closures of bank branches, post offices and so on, local government representatives should be included in this just transition. From what I hear, the just transition in the midlands has not been what they expected. They expected much more and got far less than promised. That does not bode well for this Bill or the actions we require from this Bill. Those actions will require substantial funding.

The only real way to make anything happen in this country is to go back to the community and "be small". We should go back to empowering a local community or village to rebuild itself by giving people the tools to do so. That could be a law relating to financial support or planning permission. We must allow people to come back to their place of birth or where they were reared. We should give them the opportunity to do it and have a thread running from the Government to local government to policy on planning or climate change. I welcome the inclusion of councils in this. In rebuilding communities and villages, we must think small.

Our housing policy is falling asunder because we are trying to act in a grand way but why not take the process back to the local authorities? Let them build the houses. They know the profile of the local authority housing list. We do not need a grand plan and this was done in the 1950s and 1960s when really good houses were built. We could do the same if we build "small", going back to the communities and the county councils. We should empower them to do it without the bureaucracy and red tape.

There are many people throughout the country essential to what the Minister is trying to achieve. They want to assist him in changing the way people live in order to pass the country to the next generation in much better shape.

Please support their willingness by putting money and initiatives into the model of the local community and parish that this country was built on.

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