Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Healy-Rae for the lesson on diggers, excavators and plant hire. I assure anyone who has an interest in that type of business that climate action will not affect it. Houses can be built with low-carbon technology. In fact, the housing committee is going to visit some low-carbon technology modular housing in September. I would be delighted to invite Deputy Healy-Rae to the committee when we prepare a report on that. He will see how climate action and the construction and development of much-needed housing does go hand in hand. I disagree with much of what he said.

I will speak to the amendments because that is what we are here for tonight. I am going to speak to amendment No. 227, which was my suggestion for achieving consistency with the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act. My suggestion was to insert that into section 28, which deals with the RSES. The Minister has taken my suggested amendment and inserted it into section 29, which deals with the content of the RSES. For the record, so that people know what we are speaking on here, it states that the RSES shall make provision for the following matters: the strategy relating to climate change adaptation and mitigation that is consistent with national policies and measures, including those prepared pursuant to the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015, which provides for the co-ordination of public bodies in pursuance of the strategy. I thank the Minister. I think Deputy Higgins covered it quite well, because we did have a considerable amount of discussion on strengthening this Bill in relation to climate action and protecting nature and biodiversity, which is critically important to every aspect of society as it goes forward.

Regardless of what business one is involved in, climate chaos is going to impact massively on us economically, societally and environmentally, so everything we do here in the Bill to strengthen climate action and the protection of nature is for everybody. It is not just the preserve of the Green Party, although we do lead on it and we have led on it for the past 20 or 30 years, and we will continue to lead on it. We have seen that reflected in votes across the country this weekend where people voted for the Green Party on our policies. I thank the Minister for taking this amendment. It shows is a pattern: where we spent a considerable time in the committee discussing such matters, we see these strengthening measures in the Bill for climate action and the protection of nature in the national planning framework and that permeates through the national planning statements and further on down into these lower-level plans - the regional spatial and economic strategies. We spoke yesterday about how we could incorporate that into development plans and the matters on which planning authorities or the commission shall have to be consistent with the climate Act as well. I thank the Minister for that. I thank all the members of the committee, because we did spend a considerable amount of time on this and on other matters. The Minister has taken a lot of that on board. He took a lot of it on board as well from the pre-legislative scrutiny that we did. That is another aspect of what the committee has worked on for many hours. I think we had ten public meetings and about 30 odd hours, and about another ten hours to agree the report, which is substantial. A lot of the recommendations that we made in the report have been taken into this Bill and reflected in it, which shows the fact that people are willing to engage.

There are people in here speaking on this Bill tonight who have members in their group who did not even show up. They did not table one single amendment. They made no contribution whatsoever. I do not think they spoke one word on the Bill on Committee Stage yet they are in here tonight slating this Bill and the work that we are trying to do. That needs to be put on the record.

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