Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. My remarks will refer to several broad issues and I plan to limit them to ten or 11 minutes. However, I may not use my full allocation of time.

The challenge we face to get to net zero emissions by 2050 is simply enormous. We have an existential threat hanging over us and there is a very real danger that the scale of the task ahead could overwhelm us. It is still the case that the threat hanging over our country and our planet is viewed in the abstract by far too many people. Climate change is happening before our very eyes. The evidence is there to see, but there are none so blind as those who do not wish to see. Shamefully, there is a cadre of ignorant, anti-science and unenlightened representatives in this Parliament who refuse to see what the rest of us can. They lay claim to representing rural Ireland and to having some unique insight into the ways of our countryside and rural communities. The ignorance which has often been displayed does rural Ireland and the decent people they claim to represent an enormous disservice.

If we continue to travel in the direction we are going, the rate of destruction climate change will wreak on rural communities will be incalculable, and I know which side I am on. For some time now, society has been grappling with the challenges presented by what is known as the fourth industrial revolution. Before the pandemic, and without even factoring in the changes demanded of us by climate change, it was clear that artificial intelligence, AI, and a whole host of other disruptive technologies could and would lay waste to hundreds of occupations which until now we have taken for granted. Covid-19 has put that disruption on steroids. We have seen decades of change collapsed into a year. Many business models have changed forever, never to return. Many jobs may not come back in sectors where consumer behaviour will not return to the norms of pre-March 2020.

If we are to have any prospect of meeting the challenges of net zero, our economic model must change and change fundamentally. The idea of a just transition for those whose jobs and businesses are increasingly vulnerable to the changes required of us as an economy and a society needs to become much more than a pithy slogan. Impending changes to the global corporation tax system will impact on our system of foreign direct investment, FDI. However, an even more fundamental driver of economic change will be, and should be, climate change. It is clear we must commence a fundamental, top-down, review of industrial policy in Ireland. No review of any scale or significance has been done on our national industrial strategy for a long time. A massive paradigm shift is needed to decarbonise our economy. Due to changes in the corporation tax environment and in respect of the job we need to do in the context of climate change, it is now urgent that such a review takes place.

I remain concerned that this issue of the climate and the economy is not sufficiently understood nor is it being tackled on a whole-of-government basis as a primary economic positioning issue. This is not to say this Bill and the demands it places on Departments, agencies and all of us does not represent real progress. Of course it does. In the paradigm shift away from the current carbon-intensive model, agencies such as IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, EI, and Science Foundation Ireland, SFI, need to embed the climate agenda into their make-up and their approach. A new industrial policy needs to be less about FDI at any price and more about focusing on what we can do uniquely and well here. I refer to how the entrepreneurial state can invest with the private sector in new innovations and technology and in scaling up our SME sector to export and go global from Ireland. We need to see the same State-led response to the pandemic applied to the development of the kind of entrepreneurial state that social democrats like those of us in the Labour Party believe in and can trust. Professor Mariana Mazzucato's ideas need to be brought to life in the transition to a new and more climate-friendly economy and labour market model.

To meet the serious task ahead, our Departments and State agencies will need to be repurposed. With carbon budgeting, the old ways of making annual budgets will have to change. I had an interesting exchange on this point two weeks ago with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy McGrath, during oral parliamentary questions. It is still not clear to me how, in practice, the relationship between the Departments of the Environment, Climate and Communications and Public Expenditure and Reform will change. Will the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications have a more formal role in driving overall budgetary policy? How are Departments that do not meet sectorial emissions targets going to be brought into line when they fail?

One of the most striking and worrying aspects of climate change is the impact on our treasured biodiversity. On a related matter, is the Minister of State aware of any plans in respect of the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications to better protect our national parks from the gorse fires experienced in recent weeks? We saw fires raging in Killarney National Park and the Mourne Mountains two weeks ago, and the impact on our flora and fauna and our native habitats is enormous. What we all witnessed is heartbreaking. Fires of this kind are all too frequent in parts of my constituency, namely, the Cooley Mountains in County Louth. I am not all that clear if anyone is ever held responsible for starting these acts of monumental vandalism and destruction. Our legal code must make it clear the book will be thrown at anyone responsible for these kinds of depraved acts of wanton violence and vandalism visited on our environment and natural habitats.

Finally, and I appreciate that the Minister of State may not be familiar with this issue, I raise for the ears of the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Ryan, in the context of our attitude to planned liquified natural gas, LNG terminals, the question of how we are going to approach these propositions in future. Via parliamentary questions, I raised the issue of a proposed floating LNG terminal off the coast of Louth.

The company involved is aptly named Predator Oil and Gas. Let me make my own party's position crystal clear. In our last manifesto, we proposed to ban the importation of fracked gas and offshore drilling or any further extraction of fossil fuels from Ireland's land or waters - no "ifs", no "buts", no ambiguity.

I was disappointed a number of weeks ago to read the response of the Minister, Deputy Ryan, to the question which I submitted in March 2021. I asked him if he planned to actively oppose proposals for floating LNG terminals in Ireland. Specifically, he referenced that his Department "is carrying out a review of the security of energy supply of Ireland's electricity and natural gas systems", and stated that he "will consider if it would be appropriate, or not, to develop LNG terminals in Ireland and, if any such terminals were to be developed, if they should only be in order to provide an emergency backup to existing supply infrastructure".

To be frank, by all intents and purposes, this appears to be paving the way for LNG terminals through the back door to provide what he has referred to as "emergency backup". We are faced with another emergency, namely, the climate emergency. We do not need another Government review of LNG. The evidence is clear and the Government must be clear that it is fully committed to ensuring that no LNG terminals are developed in Ireland. There needs to be absolute clarity on that point, because I did not receive clarity on it and the threat to the east coast in respect of the question I posed to the Minister in March. I hope that he will have the opportunity, perhaps in his response to this Stage later if he is here, or in another forum, to address that question much more fundamentally.

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