Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling the motion and the Minister of State for being here. We want to bring people on board. In fact, people are ahead of us in respect of climate action and climate change.

We are not showing the vision or the practical steps that are necessary. We have succeeded in dividing and conquering. We have encouraged climate deniers, which I will have no part of.

This is a positive motion. It sets out facts and calls on the Government to do various things. The targets that have been set bear no resemblance to the delivery of those targets.

Galway city and county councils distinguished themselves before Covid-19, in 2018 and 2019, when no units were retrofitted in the city or county. Any Government that was serious about this would have the managers in to explain what is happening. Retrofitting houses is just one tiny aspect of dealing with climate change. It requires obtaining proper data then getting the managers or CEOs to account for the fact that no houses were retrofitted during those two years. There might be some excuse during Covid-19.

The Government failed to update the energy poverty action plan despite the data being presented to us by various groups such as the Money Advice & Budgeting Service, MABS. The UCC policy briefing document 2021 found that 90% of households with low disposable income considered the cost of energy efficiency measures to be the biggest barrier in making their decision. The ESRI paper of June 2022 on energy poverty and deprivation estimated that recent energy inflation had increased expenditure-based measures of energy poverty to almost 30%. It considered a household to be energy poor if it spent 10%. The figure has become worse since June when the figure was 29.4%.

I have difficulty with the target of having 500,000 houses retrofitted. The various answers to me and other Deputies who have tabled questions indicate that the target is not to upgrade half a million houses up to BER B2 standard at all. It is a kind of trading system whereby all the emissions are taken together. It is extremely difficult to work with the Government and local authorities that are not giving basic data. When basic data are provided, for example, showing that zero houses were retrofitted in 2018 and 2019, nothing is done by the Government. No action is taken.

Galway City Council did great work on decarbonisation zones and identified west side as the decarbonisation zone. We are into our second year now. It was identified in February or March and submitted as soon as the Department asked for it. Nothing has happened. Would the Minister of State not think that two years after the decarbonisation zone was identified questions would be asked about what the Department is doing? I am critical of Galway County Council but in this case it has done its job and the Department has utterly failed to issue guidelines on operating the decarbonisation zone.

Climate change is a huge issue. The word "huge" does not capture it; it is the most important issue we have to face. We have to start using language in a meaningful way.

See this speech in context