Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill this afternoon. I will share time with my colleagues. It is a 20-minute slot. I will take ten minutes and allow five minutes each for Deputies Cronin and Martin Browne.

I regret that the Minister is ushering through yet another Bill at breakneck speed without sufficient parliamentary scrutiny. This method is becoming the norm for the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan. For example, the Marine Casualty Investigation Board Bill was rushed through, as was the Development (Emergency Electricity Generation) Bill 2022. The EirGrid, Electricity and Turf (Amendment) Bill 2022 was also hurried through the Dáil and did not undergo any prelegislative scrutiny. In addition, both electricity credit Bills were brought through the Houses at speed. The Minister seems to be setting aside long-standing parliamentary process and scrutiny and ramming through legislation that has undergone very little prior examination by Deputies and Senators. An absence of prelegislative scrutiny combined with guillotined debates from this Government is a recipe for disaster. Rushing legislation can lead to bad legislation. I put on record our concern about this regular approach from the Minister.

Here we are again today, on the first day after a four-week recess, with another Bill that has not undergone prelegislative scrutiny by the climate committee, which the Government intends to ram through all Stages in a matter of weeks. This Bill would confer significant additional powers on the Minister that relate to an essential commodity that everyone in the State needs to heat their homes or power their vehicles. Section 31, nestled neatly in the last line of the Bill, seeks to confer on the Minister the power to “regulate, restrict or control the acquisition, supply, distribution, marketing or use of the type or types of fuel”. That one sentence is extremely wide-ranging and would have major consequences for individuals, households, businesses and the economy. It bestows great power on one Minister. Whether we like it or not, oil remains an absolutely essential commodity so any emergency powers relating to its control and supply need to be carefully considered. Because it has not been examined in detail and the consequences have not been teased out, Sinn Féin will be submitting amendments to the Bill, one of which would require the Minister to seek Dáil approval to regulate, restrict or control the acquisition, supply, distribution, marketing or use of a fuel. Sinn Féin will not be writing blank cheques for this Minister.

It is important to ask why exactly we are here. We are living in extraordinary times due to the war in Ukraine and the impact it has had on our fuel supplies and their prices. It is important to respond to that. The Government will seek to lay the entire blame on the war but that is simply not the full picture. This State remains heavily reliant on imported oil due to the failure of successive Government policies in the areas of energy, transport and residential heating. Over the past decade, successive governments failed to realise our potential for offshore wind power. Not one offshore wind turbine was constructed during their tenure in government. While countries like Scotland were literally laying the foundations of massive offshore wind farms, successive administrations here simply sat on their hands. I visited a Scottish wind farm off the coast of Aberdeen last year. That project alone will power 1 million homes. There is absolutely no reason Ireland could not be in the same position right now. Indeed, we should be further ahead given our extensive revenue-raising ability compared with Scotland but a lack of action and ambition over the past decade has left us trailing behind. As a result, we are reliant on imported gas and oil to keep the lights on. That is one reason the Minister is seeking these additional powers here today.

The slow pace of change to electric vehicles is another reason. Other countries, like Norway, have powered ahead with their transition to electric vehicles, EVs. For years now, Sinn Féin has being calling for alternative policies to be introduced to help to speed up the transition to EVs but these calls have not been heeded. We called for a second-hand EV grant to be introduced to help ordinary people to afford an EV, such as been done in other countries. This has been ignored. We suggested that increased grants for lower income households could be looked at. This suggestion was not taken up. We also called for the VAT and customs costs that are in place as a result of Brexit to be removed to encourage the importation of used EVs from Britain, which has, in the past, been a significant market for the importation of used cars.

That was not, however, looked at. Building a second-hand EV market is important to make EVs accessible to more people on normal incomes. All three of these initiatives could be funded through reform of the existing grant scheme, which has a budget of €100 million. Reducing the value threshold of cars that qualify for grant aid, for example, would free up tens of millions of euro to be redirected to these more equitable policies, but instead the Government has been handing out grants of €5,000 to people who do not need financial help, supporting the purchase of expensive sports cars and luxury EVs and boosting the egos of multibillionaires who run many of these companies. No help or assistance has been provided to ordinary people to help them to afford an EV; quite the opposite. They are the ones who have been punished by the Government's carbon tax. It is a perfect example of the Government’s wider approach to climate action. EVs make up 20% of all cars in Norway now. In Ireland, this number is just 2.7% according to statistics from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI. This is another reason the Government is seeking these emergency powers on the distribution of fuel. Its policies on EVs have failed dramatically and left us with a tiny proportion of EVs on our roads and therefore heavily reliant on imported oil, which history will tell us is a volatile commodity. We did not need to wait for the war in Ukraine to learn that.

The same can be said regarding getting people out of their private cars and onto public transport. I raised this point with the Minister earlier concerning the need to invest significantly in the rural transport plan to ensure that communities that do not have bus services get such services and that the services in those communities that have them are improved and made affordable, accessible, reliable and safe. Let us look at the Connecting Ireland plan. The scale of funding required is not there. It needs to be increased. As I said to the Minister earlier, Sinn Féin would commit €25 million to that plan in 2023. This would ensure a significant increase in the roll-out and would mean that in 2024, if the funding was matched again, the full plan would be rolled out. This would deliver significantly increased services and present people with the realistic option of leaving their cars behind. A two-car family could become a one-car family. The daily commute could be broken up, being done some days by car and other days by public transport. People will not, however, do this when they do not have that option. Another reason we are here and we are so dependent on oil and liquid fuels is because of a failure to roll out public transport.

The same can be said when it comes to residential heating. Homes across Ireland are still reliant on burning oil to keep warm, because the Government's retrofitting plan has and is bypassing them. These households cannot afford to upgrade their heating systems, as the Government's retrofitting plan is inequitable and inaccessible. Over the past decade, shallow retrofits fell by 88%, resulting in lost heat and a higher demand for oil to keep warm. Failed policies on retrofitting mean burning oil to keep warm is still a reality for far too many people, and this further increases our reliance on imported fuels. While the war in Ukraine might be the handiest excuse to hand for the Minister, in reality failed policies in the areas of energy, transport and residential heating have all contributed to our massive reliance on imported oil and left this State and our people worryingly exposed to imported fuel. We need policy change in the area of offshore wind in order to accelerate it and this must involve widespread State ownership. We need policy change with regard to EVs to support ordinary people, with regard to residential heating to have a fair and equitable retrofitting plan and with regard to public transport to ensure people have access to such transport. In terms of more sustainable residential heating systems, Sinn Féin has asked the Minister to explore the use of hydrotreated vegetable oil, or HVO, as a cleaner alternative for home heating. HVO, which can be used in traditional home heating oil boilers, cuts emissions by between 80% and 90% compared to home heating oil.

We will submit amendments to this Bill and continue to engage with this process. We have concerns regarding this legislation. We recognise that it is necessary but there is much more than can and should be done.

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