Dáil debates

Tuesday, 29 November 2022

6:35 pm

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister on his work and on that of the Irish team in progressing the issue of loss and damage, which is a very positive and very significant aspect of the negotiations. It is imperative that we are seen to deliver on that. It must not just be governments that deliver on it but also the big polluters out there. The oil industry and the airline industry also need to deliver.

There is a misconception among the public that what happens a COP relates to the implementation of targets and all that is happening is that we are negotiating targets and reviewing the targets that were already set. However, we in Ireland and people in Europe and across the globe need to start focusing on implementing this legislation and these targets rather than just talking about the targets. I find that very frustrating. We set ourselves a target of reducing our overall emissions between now and 2030 by a further 48%, which will be a monumental task over the next eight years. We really need to focus on implementation.

When the Minister visited my home town of Athlone over the weekend, he made that very point and outlined the measures that need to be implemented. We need to drive innovation if we are to achieve that. That innovation will require long-term investment in research. Science Foundation Ireland is now involved in that. I hope that will bring about solutions post 2030. However, we need to look at practical implementable solutions in the short term between now and 2030.

I will put three of those to the Minister, all of which come within the remit of the Green Party in government. The first relates to air quality. The warmth and well-being pilot I launched in 2016 to target people with chronic respiratory disease who are in fuel poverty has been found to be a phenomenal success. Research independently produced by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine was presented in the Oireachtas two weeks ago. It shows that where we carry out deep retrofits of the homes of people with respiratory diseases who are living in fuel poverty, such individuals end up attending their GPs and emergency departments less frequently, require less use of hospital services and use fewer prescribed drugs. This is a win for climate, a win for health services and a win for the people with these chronic illnesses. If we are to capitalise on that, we need to invest in the retrofitting of homes of people in fuel poverty and those of individuals with chronic respiratory diseases. As the Minister knows, there is no scheme to invest in the homes of people with chronic respiratory diseases. However, there is a commitment to deliver retrofitting for the homes of people in fuel poverty. The difficulty is that it is taking nearly three years to carry out retrofitting where people have submitted applications for that. This is far too slow. We need to prioritise the retrofitting of homes, particularly the homes of those in fuel poverty.

I wish to speak about land use and land use change. As the Minister knows, we set a target within the agriculture sector of reducing emissions by 25% between now and 2030. While many people are willing to kick farmers and the agriculture community, very little by way of carrot is being doled out to the agricultural sector. We could have a win-win situation by encouraging farmers to sequester carbon and be rewarded for it. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has pointed out that mitigating greenhouse gases alone will not get us to net zero. We need to increase our carbon stocks in our soil, hedges and trees. To do that we need to measure the carbon that is already there. We need a reporting and verification process. Our colleagues in Northern Ireland have already started to roll that out field by field and hedge by hedge, but we are not doing it. We have decided to pick 20 pilot locations around the country. Sadly, even the pilot locations we have picked are 20 cm too short because in order to meet the internationally verified specification for soil carbon, it is necessary to go 30 cm into the ground. Our pilots are only going 10 cm into the ground, meaning we cannot even use the evidence we are producing here to put a baseline in place. We should be replicating what is being done in Northern Ireland and do a complete assessment of soil carbon right across the country in every single field and incentivise farmers to increase the content of carbon in our soil, hedges and forests across the country.

My final point relates to broadband. As the Minister knows, the national broadband plan is being rolled out across the country, delivering high-speed broadband to 37% of our population in the most isolated rural locations.

It has the potential to reduce dramatically our transport emissions if we can encourage people either to work from home or in the digital hubs that are being constructed around the country. We have already delivered 300 of those hubs around the country and we need to put a pro-active approach in place to engage with employers to use those hubs.

There is another thing that we need to do. By the middle of next year, there will be 30,000 homes with fibre cable outside their doors. As a result of that, the wireless antennae, and people have been availing of wireless technology up to now, will be decommissioned. I want to see the Minister recycling and redeploying that equipment to more isolated rural areas, providing those people with wireless broadband technology pending the delivery of the fibre solution. The only way to achieve that, I believe, is to give publicly owned sites, free of charge to those wireless companies to deploy that technology. I have already put this to the Minister and he has said to me that he will look at the proposal. We need to start seeing delivery on that.

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