Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Some Deputies in the House seem to portray our need to move to a sustainable path to net zero as some sort of a mean-minded conspiracy by the Green Party. The reality is that we need sustainability in every sector. I put it to the Minister that we are falling behind in our enterprise sector in energy efficiency, waste elimination, reuse of materials, material use levels and so on. I acknowledge that we have launched some good individual initiatives. However, like St. Brendan's pioneering voyage on the Atlantic, they are not an admiralty driving our enterprise sectors to high levels of sustainability. I ask the Minister to undertake a drive to have a much higher take-up of audits and energy initiatives. Around 4% of enterprises are now taking up those. There also needs to be a cross-government strategy to adopt, in key sectors, a circular approach to the entire supply chain.

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