Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Despite the Taoiseach repeatedly stating that climate change is the existential crisis of our time, anyone who reads the programme for Government would not get the sense there is urgency on the part of or a grasp by the Government of the scale of the problem we face and how difficult it is going to be to implement changes. The Government seems intent on continuing with business as usual, bringing forward the measures that were outlined by the previous Government and continuing on the same trajectory. It is clear, however, that this approach was not working. The evidence is there that the measures the Government had in place were not working and were not sufficient. It is not just me saying that but the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, the Climate Change Advisory Council and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI. All our independent agencies and organisations when it comes to climate issues are saying the plans the Government has in place are not sufficient to meet the 51% reduction the Government is legally required to meet under the climate Act. The current climate action plan will result in emissions reductions of only 29%, which is far off what we need.

One of the key red lines for the Social Democrats going into the election was that if we were to go into government, there would have to be a climate action plan that set out all the actions needed to meet the 51%. Unfortunately, even though the programme for Government states that the Government will set out those actions, the programme's other aspects do not give that indication at all. Indeed, the document is disingenuous because it refers to how there has been a 7% reduction in emissions, but that 7% reduction was not derived from Government policy. The majority of it came from the fact we had imported 12 times more electricity from the UK and, therefore, our emissions were not counted in our budgets but in those of the UK. It is just an accounting exercise. Using the figure of 7% in this document is disingenuous.

Nature recently showed us exactly what she thinks of how we have been operating and living. What happened was a clear wake-up call, not only regarding how we need to double down on actions to mitigate climate change but also about how important climate change adaptation is for us. When we talk about adaptation, we must recognise that the climate has changed and examine how we are going to adapt our systems to deal with that change, whether that relates to infrastructural means or to changing how we operate such as, when it comes to issues such as agriculture, changing how, when and what we farm and protecting farmers in order that their income can continue. It is really important that adaptation play a huge part over the next five years because we do not have a great deal of time to put those systems in place, as we clearly saw with Storm Éowyn and how ill-prepared we were to deal with that event.

When I look at the agricultural aspect of the programme for Government, it is again clear that the relationship between the agricultural sector and the Government is based on false promises and disingenuous information. There is a pretence always from the Government that it is fighting for farmers to help them overcome the challenges they face, whether regarding the nitrates issue or the reference in the programme for Government to recognising "the distinct characteristics of biogenic methane ... and [advocating] for the accounting of this Greenhouse gas to be re-classified at EU and international level.” When those in the farming industry see that, they may think there might be a chance this could happen, but we all know it will not. The EU and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, are not going to change policy or reclassify the gas.

What we need to do, rather than give false hope to farmers, whether through the nitrates derogation or in respect of this issue, is support them. We need to give them the facts and say how our landscape and weather will change, what we need them to do and how we will support them to do it. We need a farming sector that works for farmers, nature and climate and offers good incomes for the farming community, food security for us as a country, a sustainable business for farmers and a future for generations of farmers in order that if somebody inherits a farm, they will not see it as a burden or wonder how they are going to cope. We want to be able to give them a future for their children as well.

That is where we need, and should have seen, a vision from Government about how it will support and work with farmers so they can make the changes we will expect and need to see. All that takes a lot of work, planning from the Government and a lot of financial support. It will take a reliance on facts, and in the Government over the past five years, there was not much taking of evidence into its policies. It will also take a lot of courage. Unfortunately, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil do not have that courage to talk to farmers on an honest basis, work with them on that honest basis and help them prepare for the future.

I also wish to mention transport. It is not just about investing in transport. I speak specifically about Wicklow but I know this affects other areas. The roll-out of BusConnects has been difficult and challenging for people. There are ghost buses, cancellation after cancellation, express buses that now take half an hour longer to get to where they should than they did previously and buses taking an hour to go ten minutes. Two parents wrote to me whose 17-year-old children were last night dropped off on the N11 at 7.30 in the dark by a bus driver because he had not let them off at the previous stop and he went back to the station. I have followed that up directly with the NTA.

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