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

I thank Deputy Ó Cathasaigh for bringing forward the Bill. I am getting my head around it. I received the briefing note from Coalition 2030. It gives a context for this coming before the Oireachtas and says the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action in its report on the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on Biodiversity Loss recommends the establishment of a new ombudsman for future generations, with the resources of an office or future generations commission, to protect the long-term interests of human and ecological well-being for current and future generations. I completely get why the committee made the recommendation. It is because we are in a crisis of biodiversity loss and climate, which means a million species are disappearing off the natural planet every couple of years and, on top of that, the earth is warming up faster than scientists ever thought it would. The consequences of that are disastrous floods, droughts and famines, rising sea levels and other disastrous consequences for human and natural life.

I understand it but I want to comment on why it should not be necessary but has been made necessary. The briefing note suggests we should ensure public bodies and politicians are required to have a long-term lens on their plans and asks what if we had an office and person with sole responsibility for ensuring our country's policies had positive effects for today and tomorrow. I am sorry but I think every politician elected to this House and beyond should be concerned about tomorrow anyway and already have in their manifestos what they think about what will happen tomorrow.

Each day this week we have had another report published in this country from Barnardos, housing bodies, etc., on the impact of poverty and neglect on children. The latest one looked at the impact on children of living in poor and overcrowded housing conditions. It referred to levels of depression and alienation, lack of concentration on schooling and poor health outcomes. That is happening now to the future generations in a certain sector of society. Not the entire society is affected by it but the most impoverished and alienated sectors are cruelly feeling the cost-of-living rises on food, clothes and essentials. Parents, as Barnardos has shown, cannot afford to give children the money to go to swimming lessons, dance classes or school trips. Parents themselves are going without food or a social life.

I was at a public meeting of the Irish Senior Citizens Parliament during the week at which Age Action illustrated how the spending power of those on pensions has depleted by 25% in less than ten years. Each time there is a budget the Government gives the pensioners another tenner. If they are lucky, it is a bit more, maybe €12.50; if they are unlucky, they will get a fiver. We as the political class are failing not just future generations but current generations, including those who have retired and those who built this State before us. I do not think the answer to that lies in the creation of an ombudsman for the future; it lies in cop on for the present and a realisation that what we have in society is a neoliberal attitude to democracy. It is not that democracy has entirely failed but that it has adopted a neoliberal approach to running society. By that I mean everything in the here and now must make a profit for a certain cohort. They are called the 1% globally. That cohort makes vast profits off fossil fuels; in the case of vulture funds by owning and buying up property; from bank shares; or by developing a fast new car like Tesla and Elon Musk.

Whatever it is, there is a 1% cohort hurtling us towards a disaster. They are given every leeway by a modern democracy that recognises the neoliberalism method, where profit comes before people and before the planet, as the only one that is viable. Unfortunately for this planet all of the political class, including the party the Deputies belong to, have bought into that. There were young people of future generations in the Public Gallery earlier and it made me think back to the Fridays for Future demonstrations, which has inspired a lot of this. This is where schoolchildren, in line with Greta Thunberg's activity, were outside parliaments every Friday shouting "We need system change not climate change". I believe they understood by "system change" that the economic system, the way we fuel our world with fossil fuels taken out of the ground, and the economic system at its heart is not working and we need to change that system. This is why they were screaming at us.

Fair enough. If the Deputy and the Fridays for Future people believe that this requires a special office of an ombudsman for future generations then we would not oppose this Bill but we would seek to seriously amend it. By its very title it would imply that the office should be run by people under the age of 16. Otherwise it would be skewed in favour of those adults who are currently making a mess of the economic, political and environmental world we live in.

The Deputy and the Minister talked about an agenda that considers and addresses poverty, hunger, food systems, health, education, gender equality, clean water, sanitation, energy, economic growth, decent jobs, and the list goes on and on right up to climate change, oceans, ecosystems, peace, and justice. Surely to God that is our job to address all of those and now. If it is not happening then we are failing. The political class is failing the future generations and that is what needs to be addressed. I look forward to the summit of the future from the UN in September. It should make for interesting contributions from those who currently rule and run the world.

There is a difference between neoliberalism and how things can be done. My sister lives in Malmö, Sweden. We all in the past have admired Sweden for its approach to planning, to how it develops its country, and to the way it runs its economic and political system. Her neighbour is a town planner and there is not a plan that she works on in that city that does not start with "Where are the schools, where is the transport, where are the clinics, where are the playgrounds, and where are the parks?" That all comes first and the homes come in later. I have never seen that happen in Dublin or in Ireland. I would imagine it is the norm across Europe and other developed countries that one puts in the facilities, plans for the future, and thinks about the generations that will grow up there and live there. This never happens in Ireland. Why? It is because our planning is led by developers, by their needs, and by their greed and drive for profits, not by the future generations and what they need.

This country needs a wake-up call. It is not about following Sweden because, unfortunately, most of the other systems in Sweden including care of the elderly and crèche facilities are moving towards a neoliberal model and the privatising of a lot of the public services. Ireland needs a wake-up call to see how all our public services could be run in the interests of the public and in the interests of people and the children of the future, not in the interests of profit. This is what needs to be done.

I am keen on seeing this Bill progress, I am keen on amending it and I am keen on the discussions and the dialogue that we have around it. To be honest it is trying to put a plaster on a gaping wound rather than addressing what we need, which is system change, as the young people said. The Bill is trying to put another body in that would probably be run by older men and women who will look to what to future generations want. I will not use bad language in here but I believe the Bill is going about it the wrong way around. I will not go against the Bill but I will seek to amend it so it recognises a different type of approach to politics and not one that says: "We failed so let us try to put a plaster on a gaping wound".

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