Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone who contributed to the debate. I will respond to as many of the points raised as I can that I was able to hear in the Chamber. The Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, was present for the earlier addresses. I will respond very quickly. It will be rapid-fire but that is appropriate.

On the 2018 figure referenced by Deputy Paul Murphy, this Government started in 2020 and that was the first recorded period we could measure our emissions from. We had to set ourselves a target. I agree with him that we have to be careful about what might be called techno-optimism, which is that there will be some easy, magical, technological solution. Technologies are coming but more than anything else it requires political will. We have to be careful about the false promise that everything can come for free, be it public transport or any other service. That is one point on which I differ from the Deputy.

I also agree with Deputy Lahart. It was interesting that he referred to the "Don't Look Up" movie in respect of how we communicate regarding this. How we explain it, how we listen and how we engage will be critical. It will be more important than all the technological issues. I appreciate what he said, which is true, regarding the Green Party's role through the years in raising the alarm, in looking up and in looking ahead, but that now belongs to every party and every Independent in this House. This is not an issue that will work if it is seen as partisan or belonging to one political family and not another. It has to belong to everyone if we are to make the scale, leap and jump we have to make.

I absolutely agree with Deputy Flaherty and many others in the House that we have to help our people through this particularly difficult time as regards the cost of living. We should first and foremost look at many of the measures the Government has put in place, such as the €2 billion in funding. There are also many measures that can be an immediate solution. For example, the 80% grant for retrofitting covers attic and wall insulation, which gives an approximate cut of 25% in the average bill at a time when prices have just gone up by 25%.

Those measures are real. They can and will be delivered in a timely manner to help people out of the difficult situation that we all recognise we are in.

Deputy Ward from Sinn Féin spoke on data centres. A number of Deputies raised this. We must manage data centres differently. There is no out for any sector. No one industry can say that it is not part of the responsible solution. We are certain to do that. In Tallaght - the Deputy will be aware of this - a data centre is being built where the waste heat is being used to heat the council offices, the university and local buildings. We can do that elsewhere. People have asked what benefit those data centres can bring but if we start thinking and designing in that way where they are part of local entry solutions where that waste heat, which is the biggest problem in data centres, is used, it becomes part of the solution.

I agree with Deputy Ó Broin, also from Sinn Féin, on what he said about the need to look at the built environment and particularly the need to switch away from steel, concrete and cement and think about the embodied carbon in buildings and he is absolutely right. These new technologies with cross-laminated timbers give us building materials where we have an abundant resource supply in our forest system -----

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