Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to Ban Private Jet Aircraft from Irish Airspace Bill 2023.

I noted the Tánaiste's earlier response to Deputy Bacik, when he said that the Government will do anything to help reduce emissions. Here is a good idea for this Government. The Bill is very simple. We have a climate emergency, both globally and nationally. We are failing on all fronts to address it, despite years of the Green Party propping up a Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Government. Despite the pleadings of the Government and their explanations, our emissions are rising at a shocking level. We are the worst in the European Union. Meanwhile, the latest science is screaming at us that we are heading rapidly to the point of crossing thresholds and catastrophic consequences.

I note yesterday's report by the World Meteorological Organization that we will breach the 1.5°C level of warming very soon. I have no doubt that will happen, but I have also no confidence that globally or nationally we will address the underlying causes of that catastrophe. Those are the insatiable needs of our economic system to expand to seek profits.

We introduce this Bill in the same week that the Government proudly announced that it would remove all car parking spaces from public sector workers. We introduce this Bill in the same month that the Government rubbished calls for the provision of free public transport. Telling workers who have no access to public transport and telling others who cannot afford to retrofit their homes or to buy an electric vehicle, EV, that they must change their behaviour is guaranteed to fail and to breed cynicism and climate denial.

The climate crisis is not caused by the personal choices of ordinary people. It is caused by the economic imperatives of the capitalist system, by the lifestyles and the desires of the 1% of the global elite population and by the efforts of the fossil fuel industry.

One of the reasons for our rising emissions figures is aviation emissions. Aviation, however, rather like shipping, is a kind-of twilight zone where each nation tries to say, "Well, it is not really our issue". Together, however, they are intimately connected with the climate crisis.

The planet and the climate do not care about carbon trading or inventive accounting. The most shocking aspect of aviation is the growth in, and the carbon footprint of, private jet use. This is an example of personal behaviours that must change and where there are clear alternatives on commercial flights. In 2021 alone, 6,600 private jets departed from Ireland. There is no excuse for their use. They are a status symbol of the rich and signal that the rich do not care ande that climate change is for little people. The Bill is part of a global move to challenge that and to highlight that it is the rich and their economic system that is destroying our planet.

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