Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on the Bill. I deplore the manner in which the Bill has been introduced. This is based on legislation that was introduced in December, with no pre-legislative scrutiny, no learning and no indication that we would be back here again in March looking to pass an emergency Bill. The Title to the Development (Emergency Electricity Generation) Act 2022 states that it is an Act to provide for emergency measures "because exceptional circumstances have arisen in the market" and "further because of the situation in Ukraine". I fully understand that the situation in Ukraine has had detrimental consequences, but it was primarily because of the market, the failure of the market and what was going on. What is stated in the Title to the Act tells me that we have utterly failed to learn.

I refer to the Aarhus Convention and the lip service being paid to it in a moment. In 2019, we were forced - screaming and shouting - to declare a climate change emergency and a biodiversity emergency. That was almost four years ago, and there has been no parallel action in relation to energy that is sustainable. Here we are now with emergency legislation that bypasses the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended. It is clearly set out that we are completely and utterly bypassing that. There has been no pre-legislative scrutiny, no digest from the Oireachtas Library, no analysis of how this situation has arisen other than blaming the market and the failure of the market. Yet, we are proceeding with a system that is utterly reliant on the market. There has been utter consumption on a constant basis without any questioning. One of the eye-opening reports for me was the data centre report and the Government policy endorsing it - giving it the thumbs up - going back to 2018, without a single attempt to analyses what data centres were doing to our environment. Of course we need them, but we need analysis on them and on the use of electricity. Here were are, in a country where there is a climate emergency, completely bypassing the planning legislation to allow for emergency generation of electricity through the use of diesel.

While I will end up probably supporting this legislation, because nobody wants blackouts in winter, I utterly deplore the manner in which we have been led by the nose to this point without the provision of a sunset clause in the legislation. Fair play to Deputy Naughten who has tabled an amendment in this regard. We have an open-ended emergency in the context of electricity generation based on the use of diesel in order to avoid blackouts while not dealing with the huge consumption of energy by data centres and others. No regulations are laid down for them. We then have reports in the newspapers of Microsoft, Amazon and Google seeking to expedite applications to the EPA for industrial emissions licences. We are told how worried they are because they have submitted licence applications and because the EPA is apparently very tardy. Not a single Government spokesperson has mentioned whether the EPA needs extra help to cope with the workload or referred to what will happen in that regard. What I find extraordinary is that a spokesperson for the EPA stated that the agency is assessing 16 requests for industrial emissions licences from data centre operators alone. At the bottom of the EPA statement, there is a comment to the effect that a spokesperson for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment described the engagement between the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and Cloud Infrastructure, the representative group, as being a good meeting. The spokesperson indicated that the Minister had informed the companies involved that matters relating to mandatory demand curtailment and industrial emissions licence applications are got EirGrid and the EPA. He stated that they are not matters for him. If that is the case, what was the purpose of the meeting? That meeting should have been over in two minutes if these are matters for EirGrid and the EPA and not the Minister or the Government. However, the meeting was described as having been very good. The difficulty I and the people I represent have is that we have major problems with trust because language has been turned on its head.

This Bill ignores the planning legislation. It also makes a mockery of the Aarhus Convention, which se signed up to a quarter of a century ago. It took us from 1998 to 2012 to ratify the convention. The three pillars of the convention - access to information, access to decision-making and access to justice - have all gone by the board.

We are told that the EPA will make available a copy of the alternative assessment. The Government has introduced a parallel system to the planning laws in order to deal with an emergency that should not have been an emergency; it should have been planned for. If the Government says that emergencies come up and we have to be realistic, I will go with it on that argument. The Government should put its hands up and say that it is only doing it for a specific period but that it is because successive Governments utterly failed to make proper plans in respect of renewable energy. The same model should apply to the energy for the future.

People should also up their hands up in regard to wind farms and windmills - in the sea and on land - particularly where there is no overall picture as to how communities will benefit from or get ownership of these or how we get communities to buy in. Last week, I pointed out to the Minister that an application for a decarbonisation zone in Galway has sat in the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications since it was submitted two years ago. The Minister sought to criticise the local authorities, which I am very guilty of on occasion, and I hope rightly so, but on this occasion they are on the side of the angels. They submitted their application for a decarbonisation zone more than two years ago and nothing has happened. They are still waiting for directions. That is just one practical example. A mitigation plan was brought in - not by the Green Party - that was found to be vague and was quashed by the High Court following the involvement of Friends of the Environment. All the while, there is a certain type of narrative that there are too many objectors when, in fact, we are utterly reliant on them to protect our environment. What the Government is doing is cutting the ground from under those seeking to protect the environment. In addition, it has not provided a time clause or any recognition that this is unacceptable. If it has to be acceptable, let it be for a short period provided for by means of a sunset clause. Nothing like that is included in the Bill. There is absolutely nothing.

The legislation is difficult to understand. I ask the Minister to clarify what is meant by the phrase "it was rushed". The proposed title of the new section 88A, which will be inserted by section 7 of the Bill, is, "Agency to take alternative assessment into account". Section 2 states, "The Agency may make any feature of the project or measure envisaged to avoid, prevent, reduce". I do not know what that means. I think I know what is trying to be said but it is being done is such a rush that it does not make sense. It is not written plain English and it is not understandable. If I vote in favour of this Bill - so far, the jury is out in my head as to whether I will - I will do so most reluctantly because an emergency has been allowed to develop, which should have been avoided. With this type of legislation, we need pre-legislative scrutiny. Equally importantly, we need a range of actions which tell me that the Government is serious about energy and renewable energy owned by the people. If we have learned anything, it is that bigger does not work. We need transformative action and this is not what we are getting.

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