Michelle Mulherin (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Ruane for facilitating me. I welcome the Minister. Everybody is speaking towards the fact that the issue for Ireland and the world is global warming. It is welcome that the Paris Agreement was arrived at and that much more conversation is taking place around climate justice, stopping global warming and carbon emissions, and diversifying our dependence on fossil fuels. I see many celebrities are lending their names to the campaign and we have our former President, Mary Robinson, as a climate justice ambassador, so there is much discussion at a high level. Nobody could disagree with the general principles that are being enunciated about our responsibility to live more sustainable lifestyles and not to keep operating as such a consumer society, buying stuff for half nothing in the shops and then discarding it, with the costs being externalised in the environment and in Third World countries, where the products are coming from.

This conversation has been going on for a long time, as noted by several speakers, but I hope we can begin to advance that conversation further. I feel very familiar with this issue, living in an area that has high wind speeds, biomass potential, wave energy potential and all the rest, and from seeing issues around delivering energy projects. We never seem to get into that space. There are two issues challenging us, the first being community in the sense of how we live but also how we put infrastructure into communities, and the other, the cost. We would be having a more advanced conversation about how we achieve those objectives instead of having the same conversation over and over again. I have been at so many committees and I was previously on the environment committee. We seem to be rehashing the same conversation and simply repeating that we need to do something. I think pragmatic politics is required and I believe the Minister is a pragmatic politician.

With regard to communities, it is all very well to say we should shut down peat burning power stations but it would be absolutely devastating to the areas affected.We know that it costs the Exchequer but there are not many other employment opportunities. I heard a great deal of debate around Edenderry and I heard An Taisce and the Green Party giving out to the Government. In all the time that I have heard about proposals for renewable electricity generation projects, whether a wind farm or a biomass power station, there has never been a comment on where they should be located. Coillte made an application for a wind farm with a transmission grid at Cluddaun, near where I live. An Bord Pleanála refused permission because it was over-industrialised. How can it apply for something that scares the living daylights out of communities? Why is there not more emphasis on microgeneration? Biomass would create employment in rural areas where it can be grown as well as generate electricity. I know the Minister shares this mindset. On the urban-rural divide, I have heard many people who live in cities talking about what we should do but they should try being at a meeting with 700 people who do not want something to happen. I have never heard An Taisce saying where the wind farm or power station should be put. If people are serious about delivering on electricity targets, that is the conversation we should be having, not saying the Government is terrible because it is not doing something about farming. Human beings are affected. The same is true of the carbon tax, levying the poorest people who buy coal and cannot afford wood-burning stoves.