Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)

I have a tale of two speeches for the Tánaiste that he might help me untangle. Last Wednesday, in his budget speech, the Taoiseach included a section on climate change. He said:

Climate change is not a distant threat. More and more, Ireland is experiencing at first hand its growing impacts.

He went on to say:

We have accepted challenging emission reduction targets ... and we have considerable work to do to achieve what we have committed to. We know there will be cost implications if we fall short ... We must factor these into our policy considerations.

Later, on the very same day, at the opening of Stripe's new offices, the Taoiseach said, "I don't think we can mitigate for climate change." To put this into context, mitigation is the absolute central pillar of the global response to carbon emissions. He went on to say: "If we get into a position where we’re going to challenge every single thing, saying it’s against the climate, we’re going to divide society fairly fast and we’ll then get a negative reaction against good, progressive policies that seek to address climate and very serious issues.” It is hard to reconcile these two speeches made on the same day. The mismatch between them goes to the heart of the Government's approach to climate. That the Taoiseach can speak to the physical damage to homes and communities that extreme weather events can cause and the risks of fines to our country if we do not act on the one hand and then set that up against the idea that negative reactions mean we should not progress on the other is inconsistent. Undoubtedly, winning public support and making it as easy as possible for people to reduce their emissions is vital. That is why when we were in government, the Green Party cut public transport fares, made solar panels cheaper to install and increased funding to the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland to make energy retrofits a reality for thousands.

Building support for the necessary measures our people and our country are going to have to take also requires leadership. It is the same level of transformative, risk-taking leadership that was shown by Lemass or T. K. Whitaker in the 1960s and 1970s when they transformed Irish society. However, the vision the Taoiseach articulated last week was "Careful now, do not show too much ambition" or "'Yes' to climate action, but just not yet, just not too much". We are already seeing the wasted opportunities that slow-walking approach generates, such as the removal of the ban on dirty fracked gas, the raising of the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund and the Government's climate Minister trashing the work of the Climate Change Advisory Council. Is the Government willing to lead on climate or is it simply a Government of "just not yet"?

See this speech in context