Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I add my voice to what Deputy O'Rourke has said. We support these carbon budgets but have serious worries about delivery. We have had the IPCC report. At this point, people just need to look at weather reports over a number of months to know the reality of what we are dealing with in relation to climate change.

Recently, Councillor Antóin Watters and I met Louth County Council on the necessary projects of catchment flood risk assessment and management, CFRAM. One worries about the delivery of these projects and the difficulties around planning. Unless we can get our act together in this field, we might be wasting our time. What we aim for will not be significant enough to save the likes of Dundalk and make sure it does not end up underwater. We have to get serious.

The Climate Change Advisory Council is about transitioning to a low-carbon, climate-resilient and environmentally sustainable economy. That is what we need to do. We need to make the targets for 2030 and 2050. It is all about policy decisions. We have had a huge amount of conversation in the last while on energy, the sourcing of energy and energy security. We have more questions than answers. Public transport in this State is not what it needs to be to give people alternatives. The Government tries to force some alternatives on people with carbon tax without offering them what they need.

Deputy O'Rourke spoke on data centres. They are necessary for the companies that need them but we failed to plan for our energy security. Wind energy is where we should be at. We could be a major power in relation to offshore wind. As much as we have put frameworks together, we are all aware of the difficulties that exist with planning in this State.

I have just left a transport committee meeting where Mr. Peter Walsh of Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, appeared before us. Obviously, everyone sees that there are major issues with tendering, contracts and planning. We have the system that we have, but if we are not going to resource An Bord Pleanála or the judicial system, we will have delay after delay. These are the types of issues that we need to get sorted. If we are serious about this, then we have to consider all alternatives that deliver, including solar power, a retrofit system that works and has equity built into it and the likes of a green hydrogen policy. We have to put all of this together. If we do not, then we will be in the same position in future and we will fail.

I wish to raise a particular issue, that of communal district heating systems and specifically Carlinn Hall in Dundalk where we are dealing with an environmental disaster. It was meant to be a biofuel-heated system but it is inefficient. The system is now being heated by gas. On 15 April, people will get bills in which they will be charged 42 cent per kWh. Due to this inefficiency, people end up using 100 units of gas to provide 50 units of heat. I have spoken to the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and others in government. This is something that the Government needs to tackle. We need a short-term fix. These people are being charged colossal rates and have no major control over what is happening. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, says that it has no responsibility in the matter but we need to get serious about this issue.

We have had many discussions about the necessity of remote working. It can enable people to reduce their time spent commuting and so on, but we need to get serious about the delivery of national broadband. I have a great fear that tomorrow's numbers will be well short of the 60,000 connections that were meant to be delivered by the end of last month.

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