Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The climate Bill is hugely important legislation, but for it to be successful we need public buy-in. Like a previous speaker, I am from a rural constituency. At the moment, my constituents are resentful of the blame they are getting regarding climate change and anxious about what will be imposed on them and the economic damage it can do.

If anything has shaken public confidence in our ability to deal with climate change fairly, it is the mess we have made of peat and peat harvesting. The boatloads of peat that are being imported into the country from eastern Europe make a mockery of all we are trying to achieve on the climate-change agenda. It is environmentally unsustainable, and it is economically unsustainable. I have consistently made the point that whatever we do on climate, it must be environmentally sustainable but it must also must be economically sustainable. Unfortunately, at the moment people do not feel that is the case.

Forestry is another example of where lack of initiatives and an inability to deal with the Department's bureaucracy has resulted in us wildly missing the targets for afforestation. In recent years we have only reached approximately 20% to 25% of the programme for Government targets for afforestation. The volume of carbon sequestration lost as a result will be difficult to replace. In a generation, the people who will be in this House and in other places will wonder what we were at in 2010 and subsequent years that the level of tree planting was allowed to drop so alarmingly. That will have serious ongoing impacts. Some people have the view of forestry that it must be cosmetic. If we are to reach our afforestation targets, it must be commercially viable as well as the major part it can play in carbon sequestration for the planet.

Farmers feel they are being unjustly targeted by the climate action Bill. The uniqueness of our farming enterprises is not being recognised. Some 56.3% of the country is in grassland. That compares with an EU average of 14.5%. We have a multiple of what other European countries have, yet we try to put the one coat on all of us and deal with everyone in the same way.

I was in contact with Teagasc about an issue that was brought to my attention in recent days. The volume of carbon being sequestered by grasslands is not being measured in the contribution of agriculture to the reduction in emissions. That is completely and utterly unfair and it must be rectified. It is said that it is short-term sequestration of carbon. The methane produced when the grass is digested by farm animals is measured, but the carbon sequestered by the grass to produce the methane is not measured. Surely if it is measured on one side, it must be measured at the other. That must happen to ensure the fairness to which I referred. I urge the Minister to look at the calculation and see exactly how much carbon is being sequestered per farm. I accept we must become more accurate at measuring the carbon footprint of farms, but the measurement must be fair. We must take into account the number of ditches on the landscape that ensure the natural sequestration of carbon. Farmers get no credit for any of that in the calculation of emissions and that must change.

A serious number of entrepreneurs have come to my constituency office in the past 12 to 18 months who have the technology to do something different with slurry, but help is required from the Exchequer to make it economically viable. I have been in contact with various Departments on behalf of the entrepreneurs and I am disappointed with the response I got. We are light years behind the rest of Europe with our way of dealing with slurry. We could produce energy from slurry, and it could be of economic benefit to farmers. Instead of that, we are doing what we did for generations. I accept that we must change. The technology is there, and an economic benefit can be derived by farmers to do this.

When one travels to farmyards around Europe, one sees solar panels everywhere. We have none of that in this country. Again, it is a missed opportunity. Aside from the economic benefits, we are now worried about energy supply and we must advance the process whereby individual farmers can get connected to the grid.

As a rural dweller and farmer, I am tired of being told what we cannot do. I want the Government to focus on what we can do, to the benefit of the climate-change challenge. I urge the Minister to take on board some of the points I have made to get buy-in from rural areas for the Bill.

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