James Heffernan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I also welcome any action the Government takes on climate change and low carbon development. As with everything, we must start at home if we are to address this issue. All institutions, whether primary schools in every parish and village, Garda stations, secondary schools or medical centres and primary care centres, should have a climate change plan for dealing with energy use in future. Queens University Belfast will become the first third level institution to cease investing in carbon producing and non-renewable energies. The Minister of State may be aware of the movement towards withdrawing investment from such energy companies. We cannot expect third level institutions - such as, for example, Trinity College Dublin, which invests €6.1 million per annum in non-renewable energy sources - to stop doing so without some form of incentive. One cannot threaten to cut funding. If anything, additional funding should be provided to institutions which have a green agenda.

I have raised concerns previously about the Environmental Protection Authority, EPA, including actions it has taken and its governance mechanism. The EPA cannot be trusted to do what it is supposed to do, namely, protect the environment. At times, its agenda appears to be to suit big business and give cover to known polluters. It has offered or awarded licences to known polluters without any form of bond to protect members of the public and the environment.I note that the EPA will provide the expert advisory council with the appropriate administrative and secretarial staff. Will it be providing the expert advice too? I am not too sure that the EPA does exactly what it says on the tin, and experiences in my own constituency have borne that out. I am referring specifically to no bond being in place for Aughinish Alumina and, in my opinion, that fact should mean the company is in breach of any licensing agreement. There is no bond in place should an environmental catastrophe happen at the plant, which is a real fear among the people of the Shannon Estuary. I recently brought to the attention of the Ministers for the Environment, Community and Local Government and Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the monstrous gasification plant that was given the provisional go-ahead by the local authority in Limerick. This project has huge implications not only for County Limerick but for the entire region, if not the country as a whole. We are being treated as a nation that does not take climate change, pollution or our environment seriously. We are seen to be opening the door, with the consent, if not the tacit support, of the EPA, to so-called "clean energy" companies which are exploiting a gap. This is something that the communities adjoining the Gortnadroma landfill site will not stand for. This industry is very murky, to say the least. When I brought this issue to the attention of the aforementioned senior Ministers, they had not even heard of gasification. I do not see how this type of technology fits with the sentiment expressed in this Bill, which is why I am flagging it again now.

To get back to the issue of the EPA, there are many people who have a difficulty with its granting of licences and with how the EPA treats ordinary citizens. However, they have nowhere to go to complain about the EPA. There is no body or agency that oversees how the EPA grants licenses or goes about its work. The agency does not seem to be accountable to anybody. In fact, under the relevant legislation, the EPA has carte blanche and immunity from prosecution. In my opinion, it is negligence on the part of the Government that this has been allowed to continue. The EPA, the body with responsibility for the protection of human and animal health and our flora and fauna as well as the environment, has immunity to prosecution should it be found to be in breach of its duty. I have not seen that issue dealt with, and perhaps it could have been addressed in this legislation. I urge the Minister of State to seriously consider providing that the EPA be answerable to a third party or outside body such as the Ombudsman Commission. The EPA itself is not opposed to that idea, which I put to it at a recent meeting of the Joint Committee on the Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht. This proposal should be seriously considered in order to facilitate the protection of our citizens.