Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Okay, so the organisation that deals in science, which is what Deputy Leddin said at the beginning of his contribution, is now interpreting. This is what the budgetary process has come out with. We had debates on this matter at the joint committee and I and other members of that committee repeatedly raised our concerns about it. Unfortunately, however, our concerns were not taken on board.

In terms of what we need to do, we can have all the plans we want, we can have carbon budgets, the climate action plan and the Act, but the real issue is implementation. That is the most important element. Often there is too much rhetoric, too many plans and not enough movement or action. When I look at the key actions promised by Government I absolutely hope that it gets this right because in three year's time when we are facing into another election, I do not want to realise that the targets are not being met and the implementation is not there. At that stage, we will not have the time to ramp up to get it done properly. I honestly and truly want this to happen and for the Government to get it right but on wind energy, for example, the sector is saying that we are not on target to meet the 2030 targets. Retrofitting is going to be an incredible challenge. The way in which the programme is being rolled out is not reflective of a just transition. A huge number of people in our communities will not be able to afford to retrofit their homes. We are relying on wealthier individuals who are in a position to either fund the work themselves or take out loans to do so. The majority of people are so stressed about feeding their children, buying school uniforms, making their mortgage repayments and paying for food and fuel that they will not be able to think about taking out loans in order to make their homes warm and comfortable, regardless of how much we need them to do that from a climate perspective. It makes sense that people would want their homes to be warm and comfortable, but they will not be in a position to get the necessary work done. That is a big gap with the retrofitting programme. It forgets about the low- and middle-income earners who will not be able to afford it.

When we talk about transport, we need to move people not into electric vehicles but onto public transport and yet I have not seen any improvements in my constituency. I have not seen the type of transformational change we need in transport. The Connecting Ireland plan, the whole purpose of which is to bring public transport to rural Ireland, which is where we really need to expand it, received €5 million in funding this year. That is a paltry amount. This must be transformational. We need to put everything into it and we need to do it quickly.

I also want to talk about consultation. In his speech, the Minister said there was consultation with the joint committee and the public and also input from the CCAC but we need to move beyond tick-the-box style consultation. Were any changes made to the carbon budgets as a result of the public consultation? How many people made submissions? They have not been published yet and there is no indication of the numbers who made submissions or whether their contributions were taken into account. I do not think there were any changes made as a result of the recommendations of the committee. There were 36 recommendations in its report. As Deputy Leddin said, we worked long and hard and passionately to bring forward those 36 recommendations and get agreement on them. I am interested to know if they were taken into account. Where is the public consultation? Will the Government be publishing that? Will people be able to see where their input was heard? That is really important. If we want people to engage in this process and if we want to bring communities along, we need to make sure that when they do participate, it means something. I ask the Minister to come back with details of what will happen with that consultation.

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