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

I thank Deputy Duffy for introducing this motion. This is a debate I welcome because it forces us to think about design in our lives. Much of the problem we have in emissions is around design. It is commonly stated, and I have no reason to doubt it, that 80% of the environmental damage that is done by products is factored in at the design stage. We have to rethink design in many of the basic activities of our lives if we are going to change that.

While this debate is about embodied carbon in the construction sector, we could equally be debating the issue of embodied carbon in the many foods and services we import. This week the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, showed that if we include imports the embodied carbon is not the 61 million tonnes that is the subject of our inventory but 107 million tonnes because a lot of what we do in our lives involves products that have very high carbon footprints. The debate here tends to focus, quite narrowly, on sectors like agriculture and what households do in heating and transport. Important as those are, if we are talking about the impact on global emissions it is equally important how we treat other aspects of our lives and the way we treat materials.

Some 55% of the carbon in our atmosphere comes from fossil fuels but 45% - almost half - comes from the other materials we use. Construction is a good sector in point. It is the largest user of materials of all sectors. It uses 12 million tonnes of materials, it dumps 9 million tonnes and only 10% of that is recycled. When you consider the standards to which we are aspiring in other sectors, such as the 90% recycling target for plastic containers, here is a huge material user and its standards are way off. The discussion about embodied carbon is important but let us not forget that a lot of the embodied carbon in the construction sector is not on our inventory at all because it is the steel, glass and other products that are imported to go into our buildings. The way we think about tackling this often rules out embodied carbon and that is a blinkered way of looking at this.

I am a ceaseless advocate for looking at our challenges through the lens of what is called circular thinking or the circular economy. I was delighted to see the author William Reville saying in The Irish Timestoday that the circular economy is the key to progress because I absolutely agree with that. The basic tenet of it is to seek to answer the question of how we can enjoy a better quality of life with less of an impact on the world around us. It puts the question in a much more positive way than a lot of the debate we have around environment and emissions. It also identifies the wider responsibility. It is not just on the producers in this world; it is on all of us. It is right through the supply chain that we all have responsibility for choices. Transformational change cannot be just about some sectors, it has to be about all of us and it has to be fundamentally about design.

When you take the construction sector, the truth is the safe design is not to do any of the things the Minister of State articulately explained are possible under the building regulations and various definitions and approaches to waste. These things are not happening because no one feels the obligation to do them. The issue is we are all complacent. It is a complex supply chain. The person commissioning the building may have a fixed view that is not informed by any of these regulations the Minister of State is developing and the funder may be the same. The taxonomy is still a long way from impacting most of our funders and the architects may not be tied in. To be fair about Deputy Ó Broin's comments on the planners, a lot of these provisions are already in the planning law. We can do it but it is not happening.

There is also the issue of the poor occupancy of the buildings we have. Two thirds of us are in buildings that are in excess of our needs compared with other countries where it is half that amount. We are not good users of the buildings we have. On materials, we use one third of the timber that is used by Scottish builders and we are not that dramatically different from Scotland. The Minister of State is probably right that it is not the restriction to 10 m that is stopping it but it is the people who are commissioning and designing the buildings who are not changing it. Recovered material is rarely reused. Part of the problem is the regulatory system and it has been frustrating for people that this material gets designated as waste and then they have to battle long and hard, if they were even bothered or had segregated it on the sites, to get it back and designate it as no longer being waste.

There is an understanding of the pathways but it is scattered so thinly across the sectors that we are not getting the result we need. There are two things I would advise the Minister of State to look hard at. First is public procurement. That has to be a leader of this and it is not a leader in any sense of the word. It is not pioneering new design or seeking to look at the life cycle. It is slow to move and it does not recognise the need for transformational change. That has to change if we are to win this battle. Second, the way in which we move from having all these good intentions to implementing them is to put this strategy under the eye of the Department of the Taoiseach and at the heart of the climate strategy. I would advocate that we start to make the circular economy strategy a pillar of the climate strategy because that is the one that is jointly overseen by the Taoiseach and the responsible Minister and that is the strategy that can call to account local authorities and other agencies as to whether they are delivering. That is where public procurement can be forced to come from being a sleepy attender to these issues to being a pioneer seeking to lead the change.

We need to go to the circular economy and start to debate this and look at it as a challenge for the entire supply chain. We are all in this together. That includes consumers choosing fast fashion as much as farmers deciding how they farm their land. When we feel we are all in that together and the impetus is coming from the Department of the Taoiseach and the core of Government, we can break down a lot of the conflicts that dog the debate about achieving our climate and environmental targets. The Minister of State is a leading advocate for trying to bring sides together to deliver change but those are two things that are within our hands in Government and we could shift the degree of momentum there. It would not be just about embodied carbon in construction but it would be about many of the other dimensions of the global challenge we all face.

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