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

I welcome the debate. I welcome all the work that Deputy Brian Leddin and the committee put in, including Deputies Darren O'Rourke, Paul Murphy and others who have left the Chamber. It has been a very valuable debate with a lot of insight. Globally, we are using materials from nature each year that are double the capacity of nature to replenish. That is heading in the wrong direction and we will soon be really dipping deep into nature's capability and reserve.

The assembly very clearly showed that existing efforts have failed and that was illustrated in many ways. Only one local authority was found by the EPA to be fully effective. Despite multiple strategies, the impact on our heritage is hugely damaging. Some 46% of habitats are in deterioration, there is damage to wetlands and the number of pristine rivers has reduced from 510 to 32. On the other hand, the potential gains from rebalancing this are huge and far in excess of the investments made. That is illustrated clearly. As the Minister said in the foreword to his own plan, nature is a powerful ally. If we can get nature working to assist us, it will respond very quickly, so there is a real opportunity. The biggest single failure is the lack of policy coherence. We work in silos. The test of whether the Minister has achieved with his new plan is whether those silos break down and we have more coherence in land use policy, better mechanisms across many Departments to enforce the existing rules and improvement in the mechanisms being used, given many are defective and deficient to the needs.

I would be interested to hear from the Minister of State whether the idea of reporting back to an Oireachtas committee on this plan will be taken up. The discipline of reporting back annually is important. We need stronger institutional elements. I am disappointed that the Government has not decided that the biodiversity action plan, along with the climate action plan and the circular economy plan, when it comes back, would not be integrated and overseen by the Department of the Taoiseach. That is what we need to actually shift the dial and get it into the heart of Government, as the Minister of State said.

One of the critiques of the citizens’ assembly is that the targets set were too vague. I see the Minister has referred to targets, including international targets agreed at Montreal that refer to a 50% reduction in pollution impact, a 30% reduction in degraded land, increases in urban open space, halving food waste and so on. We need a hard look at the targets being set in each Department to see if they are fit for purpose and adequate to the requirements. It is very important that we set ambitious objectives. While I have tried to absorb some of the plan, I am not sure this is in it.

One of the things that came out very strongly from the citizens’ assembly is that partnership and not finger-pointing is the route forward. Farmers are custodians of 70% of our nature and the food sector plays a pivotal role. Where I part with Deputy Murphy is that while I absolutely agree with the need for an ambitious objective, the challenge for the Government is not to imagine that a constitutional campaign means that with one leap, our hero will be free. That is not the reality. The path to resolving these issues is a very deep political challenge. It requires the skills of resolving conflict in a lot of key sectors that are important to making that change. This will not be resolved by a stroke of a pen in a referendum. We need to build the sort of consensus that is necessary to do it. We need to incentivise some of the changes that are necessary. Taking a very ideological, unbending approach to achieving this will not be successful.

We need to build on some of the initiatives that are happening. The new corporate sustainability reporting directive is changing the dial for many companies. Data companies, which are the subject of particular opprobrium from many people, have adopted a net-zero objective not for 2050 but for 2040. Some of these companies are ahead of us in their thinking but it needs to flow right back through the supply chain. The same is true of the food sector. We need to see the reality of carbon farming and of rewarding farmers for doing the sort of things the Minister of State wants to see them doing.

As the report said, if we do not have the scientific data, we still have a fair idea of what is the right direction to go. We will have to take a punt on some of the measures, even though we might not be able to show that all the science justifies the payment to a farmer to do certain things. If we are waiting for the perfect model, it will not be here in time for us to respond, so we need to be braver in our approach to addressing that.

I welcome the €12 billion infrastructure, climate and nature fund that is being put in place. However, I wonder why we are waiting until 2026 to start taking some of the initiatives that could be funded from that massive fund.

Even if the 2026 figure, for whatever reason, remains in law, the Minister of State should be issuing a call now. There is a long gestation for the sort of innovations we want to see funded by this fund in terms of nature playing a more creative role in the challenges we have. I welcome what the Minister of State is seeking to do here. Perhaps we do not have sufficiently granular targets or well enough developed policy tools yet. It would be good to have some Oireachtas oversight of the 194 actions to help the Minister of State. We need to see this innovation fund used very creatively. We need much more effective policy instruments to support farmers in making the changes we want to see.

Above all, the Minister of State should look at what his colleague is doing with the circular economy legislation. It is really important that we take a sectoral look at what can be done to reduce environmental damage in all sectors of modern life. For example, when a circular economy approach is taken we can start to look at the design of how we can meet our needs. The way we meet our travel needs is quite bizarre. Most of us have one, if not two, cars sitting in our driveways that are idle 98% of the time. This is a massive asset that has been extracted from nature, sitting idle for a long time. We need very innovative design thinking if we are to find a way of reducing that amount of wasted material but still meet our travel ambitions. I do not think that the solution is, as some people advocate, that our travel ambitions be curbed. We need to recognise that there are travel ambitions and find design solutions. Sometimes the debate about transport focuses too much on telling people what they should not be doing, rather than helping them to meet their needs in a way that does not do the damage it is now doing. We need to have this mindset change. That is why I am not convinced that a constitutional debate with a "Yes" or "No" will deliver the sort of change we require. That is not the way politics has ever worked. We would be fooling ourselves if we thought that it could be the silver bullet. I do not deny that it may have a role, but the silver bullet is to be found in thousands of actions by individual consumers who are motivated by their recognition of the need to do things differently.

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