Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate. We face three interlocking crises at the moment, that is, an energy crisis, a climate crisis and a refugee crisis. We need a resilient strategy and we need it now. It is important that we start to bend our minds in this Oireachtas, using the best minds from across this Chamber, to how to do that. There are plenty of pillars on which we can build it. We need a consumer protection pillar to promote switching, to make it easier to make contact with utilities and to offer the best available tariffs. Huge change could be made in the regulatory system to improve the lot of consumers. We need to better manage our supply chains in every sector to better manage fuel, fossil fuel use, resource use and waste. That is particularly true for construction, food, retail, equipment, cars, white goods and so on. We need initiatives to optimise asset use. Our sharing platforms are lamentable. We still have not delivered a platform to allow the new e-scooters to be shared on our streets. We need to remove the GDPR obstacle that is preventing the 750,000 smart meters we have put into homes from being used to bring down the cost of fuel for people. We need structural solutions for vulnerable groups.

The Minister is to be commended on rolling out the warmer homes scheme but we should shelve some of our ambitions for the deeper retrofits to ensure we move much more swiftly to deliver the lower hanging fruit that can be delivered on lower fossil fuel dependence. We need to tackle the delivery crisis we face in critical infrastructures that will be needed for these three crises, including the roll-out of renewables, the capacity to build at higher density and so on. Most of all, we need to mobilise communities in a way we have not done before. There are elements of it there with sustainable energy communities but we need to see communities supported to deliver resilience, such as resilience within the farming sector. There are many farmers who could do something but because of their age or their lack of access to resources, they might not have the capacity to deliver it. Communities can work together. There is the old Irish concept of a meitheal, which can deliver these changes within our communities. Those are all elements of a resilience strategy and I could list many more. What do they all have in common? They are at the heart of a circular economy strategy - that is what unites them - and they are about using the resources we have more prudently.

As Deputy Connolly, who has now left, said, we are the worst country in Europe in the circularity rate we apply. In the last four years local authorities were given grant aid to put in electric vehicle, EV, infrastructure. Not one local authority has put in one charger for EVs, even though we want and desire people to make the switch to electric driving. Some 25% of our food is wasted. We can make huge changes there and there are some pioneering people at work in that sector. Some 90% of our private car journeys are single-person journeys because we have not promoted the concept of using our assets more fruitfully. We lock people out of our schools and public infrastructure, where they could have multiple uses in their communities. We have not developed solar panels as an option to become more self-sufficient. Only 5% of our smart meters are being used to allow people to use their energy more prudently and avoid high-cost fossil use when they could have renewable use. In the building and construction sector, only 10% of materials are recycled, which is an appallingly low figure. This is the sector that uses the most materials when it comes to the circular economy and it performs the worst in turning them around. We make little use of timber, which acts as a store of carbon but we make heavy use of concrete, which is an expensive way, in climate terms, of carrying out construction. We have no culture of repair. Like Deputy Connolly, I grew up in a world where we repaired everything. My father always had his torcement, as he used to call it, to mend things that the culture did not tolerate throwing away.

I welcome the arrival of a circular economy Bill but I am disappointed at the extent to which the recommendations in the pre-legislative scrutiny have been taken on board. It is a milk-and-water definition and it does not explicitly name the need to rethink and redesign the supply chains that we rely on up and down the country. No criteria are set out in the legislation for principles and policies against which a plan should be developed. We have not insisted that good design principles be enunciated and promoted in each and every sector. We have not placed an obligation on Ministers other than the Minister of State to report or take action on their responsibilities. We have left it to the EPA to develop the programmes when it has to be a whole-of-government approach to delivering programmes if we are to fulfil the ambitions of the strategy. We have no system of reporting or accountability across the system in delivering on the circular economy ambitions. We have not integrated it into the climate action plan, which has oversight from the Department of the Taoiseach and has yearly reporting. This should be integrated within that. It is in the same parent Department so it should be integrated as a core element. The EPA is not given sufficient leverage for its programme development. All the Bill does is require it to furnish a copy to public bodies. That is the lowest level of pressure that can be put on a public body to deliver. No power has been given to impose levies on materials, even though as we look further ahead the circular economy will undoubtedly need to go beyond the action being taken on single use plastics and containers to other areas. The issue of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS, has been highlighted in the report of the Committee on Environment and Climate Action and there are many who want to see PFAS outlawed because it is not consistent with the approach we should take. We also have not committed to having sectoral plans. I welcome that the Minister of State has said there will be sectoral targets. They have not been enunciated yet and it is right that they should not be enshrined in primary legislation but we have to know that there will be sectoral plans and that such planning will start immediately.

I know that the Minister of State's heart is in the right place and that he is determined to make a difference with this circular economy legislation. I have given quite a bit of my time since leaving office to look at the potential in this area and there is low-hanging fruit that he could be gathering now and in the near future. There are also major structural changes that we could start to put in place now so that they could be part of a resilience strategy. I agree with what the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, said earlier about hearing too much clamour from the Opposition benches to the effect that we should spend more on sheltering people. We cannot shelter everyone from the changes that are coming because the energy and climate crises are real. We have to change behaviour and that means that the money you have goes into shifting behaviour, not into just trying to shelter people from the worst impacts. I agree that this has come as a huge shock and the Government is right to try to shelter people to some extent but the message is that we need to make permanent shifts and we have the capacity in Ireland to make those. We have always been adaptable, which has been one of our strengths. The reason we have had good economic growth and we have been a stellar economy is that we have been able to see, before others, the need to adapt. This is an area in which we need to adapt because the later you leave it the more expensive it is. If we adapt now, we gain a competitive edge and we gain a much better contribution to creating a sustainable environment for our community and for all of us.

I wish the Minister of State well and I look forward to the debate on Committee Stage. I hope the Minister of State will be willing to accept amendments from Government colleagues, as well as from the Opposition, and is open to making changes. We get one shot at this as an Oireachtas and we need to give it our best shot. Hopefully that will put lead in the Minister of State’s pencil when he comes to sit down with other Ministers to look for action from them.

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