Grace O'Sullivan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister, Deputy Denis Naughten, for coming to the Chamber. This is my first opportunity to congratulate him on his appointment and wish him well in his brief. Let us be under no illusions. The role he has accepted is one of the most challenging. With poverty, both at home and abroad, social exclusion and disadvantage, we can rank the climate change catastrophe as representing an enormous threat to humanity. It has the potential to destroy countless lives.

It was proposed that "climate action" be included in the title of the Minister's Department and ministerial responsibilities. If I had to pick two words to sum up what we expect from the Minister, they would be "climate action". Based on what he said , I hope he will be our climate action man. I say this because action has been missing consistently from our response to climate change. After more than nine years of painful birthing of climate legislation, the climate response architecture will not be fully active for another couple of years. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, has told us that we have already exceeded our EU emissions targets for 2020. We have reached the endgame. Without serious corrective measures, we will be fined. An EU analysis suggests Ireland will not meet its renewable electricity, heat and transport sectoral targets either and we face significant fines from 2020. We, therefore, need a plan for the future. We need to invest now in good initiatives that will save energy and encourage the use of renewables rather than waste money on fines after 2020.

Last December we had the monumental Paris climate deal. It was a real, solid achievement for the betterment of the world in these times of great uncertainty. The Taoiseach told us here at home that we would be at the forefront in responding to the climate emergency. However, when he got to Paris, he made us a laughing stock in pleading for special treatment for Ireland, while to some degree representatives of Bangladesh, sub-Saharan African countries and Pacific island nations looked on with raised eyebrows. This deeply cynical behaviour was entirely consistent with his approach to climate change. With his Ministers in the previous Government, he made the same plea when agreeing to the EU 2030 range of targets. If Ireland is to live up to the spirit and the letter of the Paris agreement, we need a fundamentally different approach. We need a firm statement from the Government that it is not only possible to fully decarbonise the economy by 2050 but that this is a core objective and commitment that runs across all areas of policy. That is something I hope to hear from the Minister today and I am prepared to work with him on it.

We need to look towards reforming the public service obligation, PSO, levy; phase out the subsidy for peat and gas burning and work towards a new PSO model to commence by 2020. We need to talk about divestment from fossil fuels, green procurement and ensuring wind energy sources are developed in a responsible way that will include input from local communities. Again, we run the risk of running into enormous problems in the development of solar energy projects. Although the number of applications to develop such projects and connect them to the national grid has ballooned by more than 150% per annum during the past two years, there are no planning guidelines to deal with the influx. We are just repeating the same ignorant mistakes.

I am very ambitious for this beautiful country of ours. We are well placed to lead the world in responding to the climate challenge in a way that will bring new investment, create permanent indigenous industry and jobs and improve the quality of life of citizens.Yet, because of bad planning, caving in to narrow sectoral interests and the dominance of profit over good policy, we move ever further away from realising these goals and make it that much harder to steer the State towards a sustainable and profitable future for its citizens.

The Minister was being interrupted when I made the point, but I hope he will be the climate action man for Ireland.