Kevin Humphreys (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I echo Senator Boyhan's complaint about the fact that this House was treated with contempt yesterday in the context of the Climate Action and Low-Carbon Development Act 2015. That Act clearly states that Ministers are to be held to account by both Houses of the Oireachtas. The Ministers clearly failed in their statutory duty yesterday. They lined up in the seats beside the Public Gallery, ran up and spoke for five minutes and then shot out of the place. There was supposed to be interaction and discussion on targets. Ireland was supposed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 1 million tonnes last year but instead our emissions increased by 2 million tonnes. It appears that we will breach our 2020 targets by 16 million tonnes. This is what we were supposed to engage on yesterday, as outlined in the legislation but what we saw here last night was contempt.It was not just contempt of the Seanad but it showed contempt of the people of Ireland, who are far ahead of the people in both these Houses. They want action and Ministers held to account over the targets and commitments they give. It is not good enough for the Taoiseach to say we are climate change laggards. The Government talks the talk but, in reality, it is comprised of climate change deniers. They are not prepared to start to reduce our emissions, something I find disgraceful and despicable, and they ignore the legislation laid down in both Houses in 2015.

I would also like to raise an issue relating to Threshold's report which was launched earlier. The Government talks about hitting supply targets and we have seen the press releases and the articles in the newspapers about what action it is going to take. Unfortunately, these are not being followed up with legislation. We have been promised a rent register and a reformed PRTB and we have been told constantly that this matter was going to Cabinet. We were told earlier that proposals will go to Cabinet next week but this is not the first time. It was announced that a land agency would have control over State lands and would make sure they were made available for housing but there has been no heads of a Bill or other legislation. Measures have been promised to deal with short-term lets and a promise on this was made again earlier at the launch of the Threshold report. We have been listening to this for more than a year and there was an announcement in September of action in the shape of legislation in both Houses by the end of the year, to be implemented by June 2019. As of yet, nobody has seen heads of Bills or draft legislation nor has there been scrutiny at committee level. There has been discussion about supply in our cities and we have been promised a height strategy for urban areas, but this is delaying planning applications being put in by developers who want to get on-site and are waiting to see what that strategy is. The mantra is, "Supply, Supply, Supply", but four issues can be dealt with now. We can move on later to deal with microbeads, single-use plastics and all the other issues the Government mentions in press releases but takes no action on.