Denis Landy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I commend him on his response earlier today regarding the commencement of the Construction Contracts Act 2013. I have an interest in the matter and the Minister of State's response was full and emphatic. I am sure that progress will be made shortly.

I welcome the representatives of Friends of the Earth to the Chamber for this debate. The Labour Party recognised early that we had a problem with climate change. We published a Bill in 2009. As part of the negotiations on the programme for Government, we ensured that our legislation would be included. Thus, this Bill was published at the start of 2015. It is welcome. I wish to recognise the hard work that was done by the environment committee in the lead up to the Bill. The committee is chaired by our colleague, Deputy McCarthy. There was a great deal of discussion and many experts appeared before the committee, feeding strongly into the Bill that is now before us.

We all recognise that climate change is happening. There have been major international conferences on the matter in recent years. Key issues need to be addressed at global level. We have witnessed an increase in global temperatures by 1.4o Fahrenheit in the past 100 years. Sea levels are rising, which has detrimental effects across the world. Nationally and internationally, we must take action to deal with the consequences of unpredictable weather. I just commented to my colleague, Senator Keane, that we saw nothing but rain in the month of August while we have seen nothing but sunshine, growing grass and warm temperatures in the month of October. The weather is unpredictable.

Although I will raise a number of concerns with the Bill, I welcome it and its intent generally. It has identified what needs to be done. It contains many of the environment committee's recommendations, including the key one of establishing an expert advisory committee to oversee the tackling of climate change and the requirement on each Minister to collate information from his or her Department and report annually so as to provide a full picture of what is happening. The Bill also contains the recommendation on the low-carbon roadmap, although it will be produced every five years instead of the every seven years originally recommended.

It is not all bad news. There are opportunities within the legislation for improvements to the country as well as for job creation. The Minister of State attended the ploughing championships two or three weeks ago. At that event, we saw the entrepreneurial spirit of Irish people who, realising that climate change would not happen by accident, but by actions, had come up with novel ideas across the sphere from food production and agriculture to tourism and the marine - in this regard, one of our most outstanding attributes is the methodology of our beef production - to tackle the climate problem, create employment and ensure sustainability in our society.

A number of Senators referred to the timescale of the mitigation plan. It was reduced in the Dáil by way of an amendment that the Minister of State tabled from 24 months to 18 months. Before we conclude, the Minister of State might explain why the timescale cannot be reduced further. This issue has been raised by two other Senators and I am also concerned that the lead-in time is too long.

I welcome the inclusion, by way of an amendment, of the explicit statement that the climate advisory council shall be independent in the performance of its functions. This is critical if the Bill is to have credibility and for it to work to the fullest.

Although it is welcome, the Minister of State might explain why we cannot go further with the matter raised by Senator Keane, namely, incorporating the initiatives and experiences of local authorities in implementing greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.The language around that is critical for the inclusion of local authorities not as entities but as bodies of democratically elected councillors. The Minister of State was a councillor for 11 or 12 years. I was a councillor for twice that period and I know that in the main it is councillors who drive these initiatives at local authority level. However, I recognise that sometimes the executive puts together the finished product. Anyway, councillors, as representatives of communities who have concerns about climate change, drive the change and the initiatives that councils undertake. There are many fine initiatives in place already throughout the country. If we gathered up those before actually putting the plan in place, we could start from there as a reference point. That would be a good thing.

I welcome the inclusion of a reference to the protection of public health, something that could easily be glossed over. It is important in respect of seeing how far we can go without affecting health issues. Overall, I believe we have done a good job in bringing this forward. I am proud to say that the Government has published the Bill and is now bringing it through both Houses of the Oireachtas. There has been much talk on the issue in the past 20 years, but little action. As with many other things, we are seeing the action from this Government, and I welcome that.