Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome our visitors in the Public Gallery. I can see that they are all watching and listening intently because what we are debating here today is about our collective future.

On Tuesday, last, 27 February, we witnessed an historic vote in the European Parliament. MEPs in Strasbourg voted to approve the first-ever nature restoration law. It is the first new major EU biodiversity law since the 1992 habitats directive. There has been much conjecture about the purpose of this legislation - both from the climate change deniers and what are described as the climate change tolerators. Undoubtedly, this has caused confusion and some panic. However, the nature restoration law’s aims are simple. It aims to restore at least 20% of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030 and all its ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050.

Because it often goes unmentioned in this House as many European Parliament dynamics do, I hasten to add that the approval of legally binding targets to restore nature is a testament to the commitment of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats to environmental causes. We in the Labour Party are proud and glad to commend César Luena, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats MEP from our sister party in Spain and chief negotiator on the nature restoration law, on his hard work and commitment in seeing this vital law passed. The groundbreaking nature restoration law addresses not only the loss of biodiversity but also contributes significantly to combating climate change, enhancing agricultural resilience and meeting international commitments.

We are not in ordinary times. A total of 81% of Europe’s assessed natural habitats are in poor condition. We are witnessing ecological collapse and are living through an extinction event. Human-driven changes are seeing the world get worse not better. That is true even here in Ireland where our geography often spares us from seeing with our own eyes the scariest consequences of these changes. The songs of corncrakes, hen harriers and curlews have slowly gone silent in many areas where once they were heard. Algae covered Lough Neagh, poisoning local wildlife and endangering human health. We see native tree species struggling for space. It falls on us to change that.

I believe in the power of politics to make pivotal and transformational change. Politics and collective action are two of humanity’s greatest inventions. While often debate on the biodiversity and climate crisis can tend towards misanthropy and misinformed outrage, I think it is worth seizing on hope. There is hope and we all have agency. We must realise the power we have as individual citizens, as activists, as communities and indeed as a State because all is not lost. Such negative and fatalistic thinking serves no one. Humans are social animals. While we are undoubtedly capable of damaging the world around us, we do have agency and we can fix things. That is without question. We can protect our world and help it to flourish but only through collaboration. The unity displayed by our own political grouping in the European Parliament in getting the nature restoration law over the line showcases the importance of working together to achieve ambitious environmental goals.

Honesty, dedication and a unified commitment to tackling climate and ecological breakdown constitute the minimum that is required if we are to avert disaster. Unfortunately, it does not yet look as though we have arrived at that point of consensus. That failure leaves everyone worse off not least those from an agricultural background who were told to cultivate land and steer their business in a particular way and are now being told that they must do it another way. We must resource and assist them to change. Those who need a just transition most are most deserving of honesty from their political representatives and to be fair, we get that honesty from the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, and his colleagues because it is clear that adaptations are needed. Those who are being asked to help that process along deserve leadership from those making the ask and they are getting that leadership. They deserve honesty from everyone in this House.

After some dithering last year, it was positive to see the two largest parties in Government decide to support the legislation. I do not think it would be fair to attack Government TDs for doing the right thing. However, particularly coming up to European elections, voters deserve to know what they are supporting if they vote for Fine Gael notwithstanding the decision by five Irish European People’s Party MEPs. The European People's Party, EPP, which is the group to which Fine Gael belongs in the European Parliament, opposed the nature restoration law. Let us not forget that last July, EPP MEPs submitted amendments for a total boycott of the legislation. They were joined by the European Conservatives and Reformists as well as the far-right Identity and Democracy groups in the Parliament, which tabled amendments calling for the legislation to be rejected entirely. We understand that Fine Gael MEPs faced down that not inconsiderable pressure from within the EPP to support those boycott efforts and that is to their credit. Those Fine Gael MEPs did choose to engage with the process, which is a welcome departure from the very dangerous rhetoric we have seen from their EPP colleagues, notably the EPP president Manfred Weber. While Fine Gael MEPs did support the vote, there are serious concerns about that centre-right grouping’s approach to protecting our planet’s future. The EPP is not only content to coalesce with the climate-denying far right, it actually courts those parties in an attempt to consolidate power. It is true that Fine Gael has sought to censure some of the most sinister elements of its European grouping such as Viktor Orbán's membership prior to his leaving in 2021. However, the grouping as a whole routinely stands in the way of the kind of progress we need to see. The leader of the EPP Manfred Weber, who the EPP initially sought to make Chief Commissioner of the EU, embarked on what can only be described as a personal crusade to kill the nature restoration law. He was even accused to spreading disinformation - this from the leader of the group in the Parliament. That bad policy and those alliances with the hard right do not represent a fringe element in the EPP. They come from the very top and we need to be conscious of that in terms of the European elections and who we choose to send to represent us in those significant European groupings.

Notwithstanding the important vote we are debating, it is one of many new measures that will be needed. An alliance of the right and far right after the elections in June is a clear threat to environmental progress. It would be disingenuous to highlight the skeletons in the Government’s closet alone. I have been deeply concerned by some of the actions of those in Opposition. It was mentioned earlier, and some of them responded while others from the Independent ranks will respond later.

Many in those ranks have sought to undermine climate and biodiversity action at every opportunity by utilising dog-whistles and straw man arguments to sow distrust and conspiracy theories. Farmers and those in rural Ireland will need strong representation and advocacy to get that much-needed just transition I spoke of earlier, but they deserve to get it from those with their true best interests at heart. There will be no room for small farmers in the event of ecological collapse. Business will become completely unsustainable, except for those with the deepest of pockets. More supports are needed to bolster a move towards sustainable farming. Standing in the way of measures to make our country more sustainable, however, are short-term solutions to a problem which stands to have dire short-, medium- and long-term impacts.

It was also deeply alarming to witness Sinn Féin's MEP voting against this critical legislation in the European Parliament. For some hours on Tuesday, it seemed that the party could not decide its position. One European election candidate celebrated the passage of the nature restoration law after Sinn Féin's only sitting MEP had voted against it. It used to be the case that Sinn Féin in government in the North would do one thing and then say something different down here. Now, if its members want to represent Dublin, they say one thing; if they are representing a more rural area, they vote the complete opposite on something. This is quite extraordinary. It is not the first time Sinn Féin has displayed a somewhat wavering commitment, putting it mildly, to climate action.

As we know, the party also opposes carbon tax, despite the UN stating that the taxing of carbon emissions would be central to getting global warming under control. At a time when urgent action is needed to address climate and biodiversity breakdown, the planet and all the species living here deserve courage. Most of all, though, they deserve honesty and leadership from their politicians. We can bring about equitable solutions to this challenge, ones which do reduce inequality and provide business opportunities sustainably, rather than increasing pressure on our planet. How would we feel if we thought the environment around us was in danger to such a degree that the plants and animals we no longer notice around us were gone? That is the future facing us and the generations to come. The passage of the nature restoration law marked significant and very welcome progress and it is something we can build on. The cost of failing to do so will be just too high. It is existential and fundamental.

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