Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I did not think she would get around to me so quickly. I am very happy to be named on the amendment. I have two points to make. The first is that it is scandalous that the Government is putting a guillotine on this, the most important - or what should be the most important - piece of legislation we will pass in this Dáil. We are not getting sufficient time to debate the issues because the Government, and the Green Party in particular, do not want to deal with the inadequacies of the Climate Action Bill. I was listening to the debate earlier and another Member made the point that we all want to see the targets and so on but the very fundamental point is that the Government's own targets, set out in the Bill, do not match with the science. They are less than even the EU targets, which also do not match the science. As such, we are not doing what the science demands here and we are going to be in a worse position as a consequence of it.

The main point I want to make is about the just transition, which is obviously effectively missing from the Bill, in that there is an absence of a decent definition and so on. There is a very good parallel between the treatment of workers in the airline industry due to Covid measures and the needs with respect to a just transition and moving away from a fossil fuel-based economy. It is remarkable that any time there is criticism about the way airline workers are being treated, the Government turns around to the Opposition and says we are responsible. It says the people in Opposition who were the ones calling for mandatory hotel quarantine, that we are the ones who have shuttered the airline industry and that of course we are responsible. There does not seem to be any kind of acceptance, or even logical acknowledgement, that one can be both for necessary public health measures, including mandatory hotel quarantine to deal with Covid, and simultaneously say that workers should not pay the price for that. We say workers should not pay the price for doing what we need to do in terms of Covid, public health, etc.

Those two positions are absolutely compatible but then there is a question of who should pay for that. We are clear that the big polluting companies should pay.

The Government's response to the airline crisis gives us real cause for concern with regard to what approach it will take with climate matters. In a similar way, certain industries will disappear completely and others will be wound down. To be blunt, in a future zero-carbon society in Ireland, we will have extremely few or no internal flights. We should instead invest in a proper high-speed rail network so people can get around the country.

That is not a call for any airline workers to lose their jobs, wages, pension benefits or working conditions. That is the point of a just transition. A just transition means that those workers whose jobs become less or whose jobs will no longer exist as a result of a zero-carbon economy that we absolutely need - there are no jobs on a dead planet - should not pay the price. That can be done completely. We are talking about the creation of hundreds of thousands of green jobs that must happen in our economy. We can have retraining for people and an absolute guarantee for people that no jobs or income would be lost.

The manner in which the Government approached the question of aviation and the impact of Covid-19 gives every indication that it will not follow this path. Instead, with Bord na Móna or other groups of workers affected by doing what is necessary with climate change, the Government will turn to the Opposition and say we are calling for climate action and, unfortunately, that is why people are losing jobs. We do not accept that and such behaviour is just giving a gift to the reactionaries in this Dáil and around the country, some of whom deny climate change and will attempt to argue that climate action will destroy people's lives and therefore people should oppose that climate action.

The exact opposite approach is needed, encapsulated in the notion of an eco-socialist green new deal that would transform people's lives for the better at the same time as rapidly moving to a zero-carbon economy. It is not just that this can be done; if we are to successfully and rapidly move at the scale and speed with which we need to move, this must be done. Without mobilising people behind the demand to build zero-carbon housing on a massive scale, providing free and quality public transport for all, a four-day week without loss of pay, sustainable agriculture and demands that will transform their lives for the better, we will not be able to overcome the opposition. That opposition comprises very substantial and vested interests in fossil fuel companies, car companies and all the rest, including the aviation industry and big agricultural companies. All of these will simply refuse to do what is necessary.

This is not some highfalutin debate about how to define a just transition. It is about getting to the centre of whether we will be able to do what the science demands, which requires the kind of programme that transforms people's lives for the better.

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