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

I am glad to have initiated the structures, provisional as they are, for just transition. Important principles have been already established, such as the hypothecation of carbon tax, the just transition commissioner, the dialogue that has been at the heart of the process in the midlands, the local authority-centred partnership that has been so important in driving programmes and the various programme calls in all sorts of areas of human need. I hope the experience of that interim approach will inform the Bill and our building upon that for the future.

However, this is on a day when we see new global evidence that our planet is burning as we speak and we are not doing enough to stop it, with concentrations of CO2, sea levels and heat and acidity in the oceans all reaching new levels of deterioration in today's reports. On such a day, it is essential that we recognise that climate action and just transition must be two sides of the same coin. They are not separate things; they are absolutely two sides of the same coin. Just transition is about helping people to make a transition, not compensating them for the cost of unsustainable emitting activities. That is an important principle - this is about making the transition. It is about different toolboxes for different areas of human activity. It will be very different in agriculture and travel than it will be in heating, and it will be different again in industries that are acutely impacted by changes in fossil fuel.

It is my belief - I have said it often and I will say it again - that adopting a circular economy perspective is really helpful in getting different sectors to evolve the sort of partnership that sees action and just transition in the same light. The circular economy approach emphasises environmental damage over the entire supply chain. As it is no secret that 80% of the environmental damage is baked in at design stage, it is in those early conceptions of what this is about and how we meet our travel or building needs that the mistakes are made. It also emphasises that nearly half of all our emissions come not from fossil fuel use directly but from material use. Therefore, if we can economise on the way we manage our resources to keep them in circulation and reuse and refurbish them, we can make a huge impact. It is really important and that circular approach emphasises that. It stresses particularly opportunities that will emerge from delivering our travel or heating needs or our needs for nourishment in a way that is sustainable. That creates new and sometimes different opportunities.

I will give the Minister an example, and I better keep an eye on the clock. Accenture estimates that 98% of the environmental damage of land travel can be got rid of if we do three simple things, namely, to move from selling products in the form of vehicles that lie idle in our driveways to selling travel as a service, to electrify our fleet and to apply circular principles to material use. It is extraordinary if we rethink, and that is what the circular economy offers the chance to do. Our challenge is how are we going to have prosperous farms, competitive businesses, connected communities and fulfilling opportunities in a world that is net zero? Those who come into this House and try to pretend that the practices and infrastructures of the past, which got us into this whole situation, are ones that are sustainable are doing their constituents an enormous bad service. They are locking them into a way that does not allow us to achieve what we need to do. It is easy to blame big data, big oil, China, fracking or some other person in a black hat for what is going wrong. It is us who must make changes. We are one of the highest emitting countries in the world. We need to make changes. Failing to act now means that it will be harder in the future. Worse still, however, it will be our future generations who will pay for our unwillingness to confront the issues.

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