Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

Deputy Cleere was the first into the fray, regarding flood schemes in Kilkenny. He gave a very articulate presentation of the challenges and complexities of flood schemes. They take a lot of time and consultation. Given the frequency and ferocity of storms today, we need to move faster with some of these schemes, because the devastation of a flood on a household or on a town, or on shops and businesses, is huge and shocking for people. The national development plan, NDP, has allocated substantial money and capital. We want to get all of those schemes approved. I do not have clear details as to where each scheme is right now. I have no doubt Deputy Cleere does, as he is a local TD for the area. He has listed six schemes. I will work with him to ensure those schemes are approved, fully funded and delivered. A lot will depend on the progress in terms of the execution of the issues.

Deputy Malcolm Byrne raised the issue of a private wires Bill. I think it is good legislation and I welcome the fact the Government has accepted a memorandum outlining the legislation and proposals and that we have agreed it, in that respect. We have challenges in terms of data centres, as Deputy Byrne knows. He has been specialising in AI for quite some time. AI will mean a much greater need for energy. It will be energy intensive. Data centres are going to be important in that regard. Offshore wind energy is critical for this. That is why I have convened a clearing house, involving industry and the Government, to deal with macro issues around delivering offshore wind generation as quickly as we possibly can to enable us to be adopters of AI and to maximise the potential of AI into the future. It will also allow us to deal with future industry needs in terms of major, larger sites the IDA will be acquiring to provide for industry well into the future. We have been working with the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, the Department of enterprise and others on that specific issue. I will come back to Deputy Byrne on the timeline for the legislation. My understanding is that it should not take that long.

On nuclear, we may very well import nuclear through various connectors. We are putting a lot of funding into wind energy, offshore wind in particular, and some onshore wind and some solar. It is interesting. There are people who have come to me in the House saying they are against solar energy, wind energy and fossil fuels. I do not know where we are going to get our energy if we do not have a combination of all three in the short term. We will need a combination of all three. From a State perspective, nuclear would entail a lot of capital investment. We are putting a lot of capital investment into the wind energy side. A lot of it will be private sector developed, but we have to do the ports and a lot of other stuff with that.

Deputy Naoise Ó Cearúil asked a question around premature deaths. The last Government did enact comprehensive legislation in respect of towns, and to make fully nationwide the ban on solid fuels. A lot of it was coming in from the North, actually, and it was leading to a deterioration in health quality. It was way back in the early 1990s that Mary Harney, the then Minister of State, brought in a ban in cities. People may not remember, but at 5 o'clock on a winter evening in Dublin you could hardly walk through Dublin because of the smog. You were breathing in awful stuff, and it was a radical move that improved health quality in cities. The issue will be enforcement. Local authorities and others need to do more on enforcement regarding air quality in towns across the country. Up to a couple of years ago, Enniscorthy had poor quality air on a par with some towns in India, because of the penetration of imported smoky coal getting in under the radar, not being properly monitored and a lack of enforcement. That is critical for health. Deaths, lung injury and COPD can be avoided if we just do the sensible thing.

Deputy Tony McCormack asked about the delays in delivering the SEAI, Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, grants and the better energy warmer homes scheme. I take his point. The Minister is reviewing these schemes to see if he can get simpler grant schemes in place and maybe fast-track some of this. We will work on that. I appreciate the point Deputy McCormack has raised.

Deputy O'Rourke raised retrofitting heat pumps and an insufficiency of money. Again, huge money has gone into this in the last five years compared with what went on for the previous 20 years. There are limits to what the State can do with public expenditure, to remind the House of that every now and again. I am sure the Deputy reads the comments from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, and the Central Bank. They are suggesting - even a Deputy from the Labour Party has been very conscious about this - that we are spending far too much money on all of these schemes. We do need to be fiscally sustainable. That said, these are important schemes because they save energy in the future and save on household bills for people.

Deputy Bacik raised the issue of the natural environment. In the last five years, we have doubled the budget of the National Parks and Wildlife Service. I involved myself five years ago and met the NPWS. A board was created within the Department. It is an agency within the State. It has had lots of successes. For example, there has been good progress with the corncrake and the white-tailed eagle. We have created new national parks in the last number of years in the north east, and acquired the Conor Pass and marshes around Clonakilty. A lot of good progress has been made. We are dealing with the previous 20-odd years of progress and so on. The Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund needs to allocate money specifically for nature restoration and, in my view, for the acquisition of more land for rewilding and for national parks. We will continue on that track. Obviously, I am concerned about the report, and we need to respond to it.

Deputy Murphy raised the issue of the fish kill in the Blackwater, which is absolutely shocking but the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, has not come up with a culprit for this. It is wrong to just throw up the charge of a cover-up. I do not think that is fair. I do not think it is fair on the EPA because I do not believe the EPA would cover it up. Equally, however, if the EPA cannot pinpoint the exact source of this pollution, it needs to be honest about that too. There is no point in getting ahead. Deputy Murphy would be the first person, in other walks of life, attacking the Garda or the justice system for getting ahead without any evidence. We have to have an evidence-based approach to this. North Cork Creameries has been involved in other compliance issues but not this one. There has been no tracing of it to this fish kill. It employs a lot of people and has been a very successful industry at other levels in that area, which is an area that has not been blessed with multinationals or with other industry. We have to balance the perspective. There is no evidence this fish kill was caused by the agriculture sector either, in terms of farming or anything like that, which the Deputy might have been suggesting, or maybe he had other targets in that regard.

That said, it is not satisfactory that we do not know how such a large fish kill happened. That is a worry. Is our scientific capacity up to speed? This is a major kill and will have major repercussions for biodiversity along the Blackwater and that area in its entirety.

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