John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am just wondering about time needed, given the pace at which change takes place. I was reminded continuously during the Deputy's contribution of the movie "Don't Look Up". Therein lies the challenge. I am thinking of the Acting Chairman, who has some very young children. If they understood half of what was going on - given their youth, not their lack of intelligence - they would wonder why we are not being more urgent about this.

What is frustrating for someone like me is we were here having this same debate a number of years ago. That is where one of the differences is. In a previous contribution I praised the Greens because they have kept this item on the agenda and initiated this as a topic of conversation when no one wanted to know about it. They persisted and politics and society owe them a debt for that, which can often be easy to underestimate. They did so when it was politically unpopular but this issue has now gone mainstream, which is a welcome development. I often offer constructive criticism to the Minister in that he has been radical on the macro stuff, which is important because it embeds measures in law and that has been done for the first time here. He deserves great credit for that, as do his Government partners for negotiating the agreement on it with him. It is the micro things that appeal to people on the ground because it is in those areas that people can make a significant difference in the way they live their lives, do things and contribute to the reduction of their individual carbon footprint and they can be proud of that.

I know Members started to talk about the carbon tax this evening and I do not blame them for doing so because it is topical but carbon budgeting is essentially trying to reduce the carbon emissions on an annual basis and it is about setting particular targets to achieve that. It is well past time for this to even be debated but I used to be strong in my opinion on the following point. Countries like Denmark regionalise those budgets and I would have thought that carbon budgeting on a local authority basis would have been a competitive and attractive thing in Ireland. It would have also given individuals in each county, residential area and parish a sense of pride, for example, if somebody converted to a hybrid or electric car in a parish that would result in a reduction in the carbon footprint of that parish for the year and that kind of thing could be measured on a league table basis. We go for the national carbon budgeting and I understand why that is so. To have localised it more might have made it a little bit more understandable.

I have mentioned some of the changes previously. I got a lift from a taxi driver recently and I said this at a recent parliamentary party meeting. He availed of the €25,000 grant for an electric vehicle and had to borrow a little on top of it. He bought it from a supplier and the supplier claimed the grant from the National Transport Authority, which resulted in the taxi driver paying substantially less and then having to claim back. The reduction was front-loaded for the taxi driver. We should look at doing that for people who are retrofitting their houses and let the contractor apply for the grant. That would open up retrofitting to an awful lot more people because what puts them off retrofitting is that there is a big grant but they have to have a lot of money in their pockets to avail of that big grant whereas if the onus was on the contractor being employed under certain protocols to claim the grant back then people would need substantially less money to start going for retrofits in the first place. We should have introduced e-scooters on the city bike rental scheme two years ago. Imagine the reduction in our carbon footprint if we had brought them in. Imagine if, as I have mentioned for three years, we had allowed companies that purchased e-bikes for their employees to claim 100% of the cost of that back in tax. Imagine how many electric bikes there would be on our streets in our urban areas and cities if that had happened and the reduction there would have been in our carbon footprint. Those are the things that make meaningful differences to people's lives and allow them to make a tangible impression on the reduction of our carbon footprint.

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