Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)

Yesterday, Uisce Éireann announced that areas in 12 counties, from Donegal to Wexford, are officially suffering a water drought. This is at a time when we have seen tragic flash floods in Texas, wildfires outside Marseilles and an extended heatwave in many countries across Europe that is about to hit Ireland. Before I came in here, I got an alert on my phone from Met Éireann that it has issued a hot weather warning. Do not get me wrong, the bit of sun is great, but we need to recognise that this is not normal for Ireland and that our current drought is a result of a drier-than-normal autumn, winter and spring. This is climate change in action. Paradoxically, we have just had a wetter-than-normal June but, because of our creaking water infrastructure, almost 40% of our treated water is lost. There are more leaks in our pipes than are coming out of Cabinet meetings. The state of our water infrastructure is holding up the development of much-needed housing, and new housing is plugging into crumbling old pipes and putting unsustainable pressure on the whole system. We are facing water restrictions ultimately. Just ask the residents of Dargle Wood, Knocklyon, in my constituency of Dublin South-West about our water infrastructure. They have faced over 12 water outages this year alone.

The broader picture is our climate preparedness and climate action, or the lack thereof. Ever since the programme for Government was published, the Labour Party has had serious concerns about this Government’s commitment to addressing the climate crisis. Last week, in the climate committee, the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, basically waved the white flag in saying the best we can hope for now is that we might get about halfway to meeting our 2030 emissions reduction targets. People want to take climate action, but we know from a recent survey carried out by the climate Department that people’s overriding feeling when it comes to this Government and climate action is frustration. People feel hamstrung by this Government’s inaction and delay in providing even the most basic measures to allow them to engage in climate action. People want to retrofit their homes, but the system of grants restricts this to well-off households with significant savings. We in the Labour Party want to see a street-by-street retrofitting scheme backed by green loans. People want to switch to public transport but the services are not there or are already at capacity.

We need more rail services and, in the short term, projects like BusConnects need to be prioritised. How in God's name has it taken eight years and counting to get a few new bus lanes put in? In the absence of public transport, people feel they cannot make the switch from petrol or diesel to EVs because our charging infrastructure is so lacking. Farmers are getting mixed messages and, meanwhile, there are insufficient compensation schemes to enable the necessary changes to our agricultural policy and ensure a just transition.

Earlier this week, the European Commission published its latest environmental implementation review of Ireland, identifying a €3.3 billion investment gap. Will the Government commit to providing the investment required to fill that gap in order to avoid climate disaster, improve our infrastructure, which will help us on climate, and support people to make the climate-positive changes they want to make in their lives?

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