Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Cairns for raising this important issue. I will begin by paying tribute to my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Malcolm Noonan, for the leadership he has shown within Government throughout this process. This deserves to be commended. Yesterday was a significant day. The Deputy rightly acknowledged that Government MEPs voted in favour of the nature restoration law in the European Parliament. I am sure she noticed that the main Opposition party's MEP voted against it. That is of particular importance to the Social Democrats considering they are keeping their mind open after the election. I am sure the Social Democrats will want to discuss with Sinn Féin the reason it wishes to remain a climate laggard at a time when the rest of us are trying to pull together and are taking hard political decisions. This particularly the case in an era of misinformation and disinformation about what this nature restoration law does and does not do. It was disappointing yesterday that some Irish MEPs voted against the proposed nature restoration law but I am pleased that the overwhelming majority voted in favour of it.

Now that the current text has been adopted by the European Parliament without amendment, which is not a small task, with 329 MEPs in favour, we will move forward to the member state approval process. This is expected to take place on 25 March when member states, including the Government on behalf of Ireland, will have a chance to formally adopt this measure as law. It is my understanding that the compromise text is currently going through the various legal processes. The text sees the retention of flexibility gained in the general approach, including an alignment of the marine targets with the marine strategy framework directive, and a move from absolute area targets to increasing trend-based targets for urban ecosystems.

There is a lot of misinformation around the nature restoration law. There is a lot of fearmongering and a lot of people attempting to use it to worry the agricultural community in a way that is inappropriate. What will now happen is that each State will have to come up with its own national plan for how it intends to act on the nature restoration law. We will have time to do that and we will each have to develop a national restoration plan and show how we intend to implement that plan and monitor and report against implementation.

Let us be clear. This is going to require the Government to provide funding mechanisms to help people transition. That is why we made a specific decision in the last budget to set aside some of our economic and financial surplus for a specific fund for climate. This will be required as we begin to develop the financial schemes that will be needed to help people transition.

I am very proud of the record of this Government when it comes to climate. We have taken a number of very important decisions. There has been a 135% increase in funding for wildlife and parklands. We have seen our new national biodiversity plan. There is now a huge increase in the number of homes being retrofitted and the number of people seeking to drive electric vehicles.

There is no denying science in relation to this and there was some worrying commentary today. I heard the director of the Environmental Protection Agency speaking on RTÉ radio this morning about the number of people who still seek to equivocate around climate. There is a climate emergency. It is real and the science is real. The Social Democrats are not doing it but we in this House should not lecture farmers and others and tell them they must do this or that. We need to help people transition. The Government has put a number of measures in place already to do this and will introduce more. Yesterday's adoption of the nature restoration law is a very significant step for Ireland, the bulk of our MEPs and the European Union.

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