Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

All too frequently, we debate emergency legislation from the Minister's Department. As my colleagues stated, I am on the Committee on Environment and Climate Action, which has probably received more requests for pre-legislative scrutiny to be waived than to be done. At some stage, it ceases to be an emergency. At some stage, the Department must be expected to be able to plan ahead for legislation.

This Bill is the third legislative element. I believe the previous element was dealt with in October. Prior to that was the EirGrid, Electricity and Turf (Amendment) Act in June 2022, so it is probably a year since the Department was aware that this Bill would be required to meet the demands of the system, yet we are still dealing with it as emergency legislation. I contend that the Minister and his Department should have been in a position many months ago to deal with this legislation. It is not acceptable to put a rush on the entire legislative process and to put a committee under pressure not to go through the correct process, that being, pre-legislative scrutiny. That is not good for democracy. We should be able to debate these issues. I hope this is the last emergency legislation we will be dealing with on this issue. I ask that the Minister take my comments into consideration for future Bills so that they follow the full and proper process that has been set down by the House.

I have tabled a number of amendments. I have concerns about an aspect of the Bill. It is less than a year since the Minister introduced legislation to amend the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015. It was enacted on 23 July. It is a relatively short time since that legislation was enacted, yet here we are debating a technical emergency Bill that, from my reading, essentially seeks to override it. Less than a year after it was introduced and only seven or eight months after it was enacted, the Minister is already introducing legislation that is looking for a little more wriggle room in how we deal with our climate obligations. Section 3 of the Bill before the House reads:

82D.Taking into account the exceptional circumstances and the urgent and compelling necessity for securing the supply of electricity in the State set out in the Act of 2022, the Agency, in considering designated applications, shall do so in a manner consistent with ... the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 to the extent that it considers practicable, taking particular account of the said exceptional circumstances and urgent and compelling necessity.

Twice in this paragraph, the Minister is applying caveats - "exceptional circumstances and the urgent and compelling necessity" - to his responsibility to implement the 2015 Act. I looked at the exact section of the Act in respect of which the Minister wants to give himself wriggle room. It is section 15, which reads:

(1) A relevant body shall, in the performance of its functions, have regard to— (a) the most recent approved national mitigation plan,

(b) the most recent approved national adaptation framework and approved sectoral adaptation plans,

(c) the furtherance of the national transition objective, and

(d) the objective of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the effects of climate change in the State.

The Bill seeks to override this section. The language in the section is very loose anyway, which is one of the criticisms held by me and others when we debated the Act. "A relevant body shall ... have regard to" essentially just means the body can just consider it. That is very flexible, although apparently not flexible enough for the Minister, who wants to introduce additional flexibility. I have serious questions about this and am tabling an amendment to strengthen the provision. We will debate that amendment in the coming days.

When members of the public hear the rhetoric from the Government, they think climate action and the legislation relating to it are strong and robust and that climate action is one of the Government's great successes. During the Second Stage debate on what became the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2022, the Minister stated: "The Bill reflects the need to provide a strong and clear governance framework to achieve its ambition and will permanently cement a strengthened statutory framework to drive this transformative change over time." He did not state that it would only permanently cement it until one year later when the Government wanted to bring in emergency legislation to undermine the Act.

The Taoiseach spoke recently about the need to accelerate our work in this area and to move much more quickly to implement agreed climate actions across all sectors. I have repeatedly said to the Minister that the talk from the Government is good. It is exactly what people want to hear. The reality is that its actions say something completely different. In this instance, the Government, through its actions, is trying to override the climate Act that was recently passed in order to bring in generators that will add to our emissions. That is the difficulty. We all understand that the Minister is in a very difficult situation in trying to balance the needs of our energy system, the level of demand and our climate targets. Everyone understands that is challenging. However, the piece the Government is missing is that it cannot keep growing demand, encouraging that demand, if it is also trying to meet the targets because do not have the renewable energy we need. Perhaps we will in ten years' time. I hope we will in ten years' time and that we will be exporting renewable energy but we are not at the moment and there is no guarantee we will be. When I talk to stakeholders even about onshore wind energy generation, they say that there is an eight- to ten-year process to get it through the system, never mind what it is for offshore wind-energy generation. From Wicklow, I look out onto the Arklow Banks and can see a small number of turbines. How many years as it taken us to put in place those turbines? While the ambition to have renewable energy generation in place is good, it will be a challenge. Until it is absolutely set in stone and until the Government can stand over it and state that we will be producing a certain amount of energy from renewables, we should not be allowing demand to grow to the extent we are allowing it to do so. It is because it has been unmanaged and because the Government has continued to facilitate the growth in the demand for energy that we are in the position of talking about emergency Bills and the fact that the Government is hoping to make the obligations under the climate Act even weaker. That is the reality.

Every second week, we see more details in the newspapers about data centres seeking permission to connect to the grid or to get their energy permits. It is constant. It seems to be the one growth area. The Minister must acknowledge that and recognise it for what it is. I am not saying that data centres are evil or bad per se. I understand that we need them in the context of the online environment we - people in Ireland and internationally - use. I am saying that it must be controlled. There does not seem to be any control at the moment.

The Minister specified that this legislation only relates to the stations in Shannonbridge and Tarbert. I have concerns. I see that the data centres have essentially the same problems the Minister is having. The reason he brought this Bill forward is that the application process for permits from the EPA is taking too long. The Minister is bringing in legislation to shorten that process or to get around it. I ask him to confirm that there is absolutely no way those provisions can be used for anything else and that there is no way they can be used to expedite the permits for data centres that are currently seeking to have applications fast-tracked.

It will be challenging for the Government and for the country to meet our energy targets. I have previously spoken about the need to get the systems right. That is where the Government is not getting it right. The systems are not right. It is also about getting the smaller things done. There was talk earlier about comments relating to public transport. I understand that comments can sometimes be taken out of context by the media and can be taken in a different direction. However, it is important that people are assisted as much as possible. I ask that he ensures that the little things and not only the big things happen. I will raise a small, local matter with the Minister which is indicative of the challenges we will be facing to get the big things done. More than a year ago a grant was provided for an electric vehicle charging point in Blessington, County Wicklow. We are still trying to get it connected one year later. A number of Deputies have been working on it. The local district forum has been trying to get it done. I have been assured by the ESB that everything that needs to be done has been done, and yet it is still not up and running. This should be simple. It should be pretty much automatic. If the systems are not in place to make something that small and simple automatic, it will be incredibly difficult to reach the big targets and to get the systems changes we need in place.

I do not know whether the Minister mentioned that we need to see the detail relating to the actions in the Climate Action Plan 2023. We need to see the relevant annexe because it is important we know what is planned and what the path is for us to meet our targets. There is also the McCarthy review. Ultimately, the debate we are having today represents a failure of Government, and not only this Government. Perhaps the fact that we are debating this Bill represent more the failures of previous Governments to proactively plan for our grid. It is important that the review in question be published. I am not sure whether the Minister has committed to making it available. I ask that he does so. It is important we have a discussion about it. I hope when it is published, we will have a debate on it in the House.

I and my colleagues in the Social Democrats want to engage constructively with the Minister on this incredibly important and difficult issue. We want to work constructively with the Minister on it, but he must take on board what we are saying. It is clear it has not been taken on board so far because this is probably my third time saying pretty much the same stuff. Many of the previous contributions were also made in other debates. We need the Minister to listen to us about this and we ask that he does so.

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