Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will go through the developments since we last spoke. As Members are aware, we produced an ambitious climate action plan in June of this year. To illustrate the level of ambition, it is worth explaining to Senators that we must achieve very significant changes if this is to be developed. Over the next ten years, we need to have five times as much renewables as we have today. That will be a very significant expansion of infrastructure. We need to have ten times as much retrofitting expenditure as we have today. We need to have 25 times the level of new purchases of electric vehicles that we have today. We need to see 500,000 extra people using public transport or active transport. We need to see 250 million trees planted. We need to see five times the number of sustainable energy communities. We need to see zero non-recyclable plastic. At the moment, two thirds of our plastic is non-recyclable. That gives Members some impression of the really significant step up that we are asking people to make.

Senators will agree that we have built on solid foundations in having had the Citizens' Assembly on climate change followed by the Oireachtas work on climate and that has given a consensus around the legal framework that we need to put in place. There has been universal support for the report of the all-party Oireachtas committee. We have also embedded the action plan in an oversight process that I think has been proven. I worked on the Action Plan for Jobs, which was driven from the Taoiseach's office and which created a sense of momentum right across the Government to deliver on what was then the top national priority, namely, to get people back to work. Now our top national priority is to confront climate decay and, again, the same approach is at the heart of this model.

We can do great work here and design a wonderful model in Kildare Street, Merrion Street, Adelaide Road or whatever street one wishes to pick, where a lot of effort has gone into designing what it is we have to do but this will only happen if we can bring about a lot of deep-seated changes in the wider community, economic sectors and homes, among other areas. It does require us to start thinking about changing the habits of a lifetime in terms of how we travel, how we heat our homes and about the priorities we set, which is difficult for people. It also means we have to accept infrastructures that we have not been used to. In every town and village, people are quite used to having a flammable liquid buried in a hole in the ground and people do not bat an eyelid at that, but we find it hard to adjust to the idea that there will have to be wind farms, solar farms, infrastructure to build interconnection, and a strengthened grid. There is a significant infrastructural change that we have to get our heads around as a community. A big part of that will be community involvement in practical terms and in terms of an opportunity to share in the benefits and to see community gain at local level and for communities themselves to get into the renewable energy business.

There is also no mistaking that we have to mobilise a lot of capital. Internationally, it is judged that we need to mobilise about 1% of GDP, which is a lot of money every year, probably about €30 billion, to address the climate challenge. That will not all come from the Government. It is about helping businesses, farms, enterprises and homes to be able to fund the changes. The encouraging part is that most of the changes pay for themselves. They are right things to do if we were not having a climate challenge but, nonetheless, they often have significant upfront costs and we must devise models in particular for homeowners. We can have an aggregated model where people do not have to think it all out for themselves, get their own advice, get their own contractor and make their own decisions. It must be made easy for them and funding should be easy to get. We are working to do that sort of aggregation. Right throughout we will need to mobilise capital. The process must be seen to be fair. This transition is immense. We are moving completely away from fossil fuels over a relatively short period. We must make sure that those who are least equipped to make the change and those who are most exposed are helped through the transition. That is why it is so important that there is fairness in the transition, both in assisting those who are least equipped and helping those who are most exposed, such as, in immediate terms, workers in Bord na Móna. That is really crucial to getting this right.

We need leadership at every level, in every business, in every sector and at community level. The sustainable energy communities are a really effective way of getting that. A lot of people are getting involved, with 300 in place already. It builds the bridge between the Government policy - with all the good things we are trying to do - and people, so there is a sense of inclusion. We are very much aware of that.

We are also very much aware that we must have citizen engagement, in particular with young people. A whole day was devoted to young people at the UN conference I attended in New York. As someone said, young people are 25% of the present but they are 100% of the future, so the decisions we make are absolutely central to their future and we must include them. We need to think about how we do that. I have been doing roadshows myself since I launched the plan. I recently had one in a school devoted exclusively to students from schools in the locality. It was remarkable how well informed they were and what good suggestions were coming forward. It pays for us to listen.

Before I hear the views of Senators, the final point I wish to make is that I think significant progress has been made since we launched in June. We have joined the ambitious member states within the European Union that are pressing for carbon neutrality in Europe, a near-zero approach. Members are probably aware that a number of countries are holding out against that but the momentum is very clear that it is the direction of travel for the European Union for 2050. We have delivered 85% of the elements that were to be delivered in the first two quarters of the programme. It is not a perfect delivery but it represents good progress and real work is going in to make this a reality. We have seen adaptation plans in all nine of the critical areas where we have infrastructure exposed to the impacts of climate. We have seen 31 local authorities adopt their own climate charter, whereby every single local authority is now building into its own thinking how it impacts on climate and how it uses public procurement to influence suppliers, how it supports its clients, such as local authority householders, and how it integrates it into its planning decisions, among other areas. It is a really important part of making this happen at community level.We have had the budget, in which for the first time we have seen a clear trajectory for carbon price, where the Government has announced we will move on a gradual basis to a carbon price of €80 per tonne. As Professor John FitzGerald, the chairman of the Climate Change Advisory Council has said, no country, including Ireland, could have hoped to achieve the carbon targets we have set without using price because price is about asking people to pay for the damage they inadvertently do by their practices. Carbon price is an important part of it. The ESRI estimates that carbon pricing on its own would reduce our emissions by 15% by 2030. That represents nearly half of what we have to achieve. The way it impacts will be seen through the decisions people make in their homes, about their cars and about so many other things. It is important that everyone recognises that we have to price the damage. Just as the polluter pays principle has been at the heart of a lot of good policymaking, carbon pricing has to be at the heart of confronting the impact of carbon on our community.

The other essential element is that every cent of that is ploughed back into helping and empowering communities to make the changes they need to make. The way we structure that, as Senators probably know, is in three strands. First, we must help the people who are least equipped. These are people in fuel poverty and not only have we increased the fuel grant so there is an extra €2 per week during the winter months but we have doubled the expenditure on the warmer home scheme. The warmer home scheme is the 100% grant scheme in which we support people on low incomes with poor heating systems to make significant changes. Not only should we support them on the cost of their fuel today but we should put in place a system whereby on average they will save around €1,200 a year from a significant retrofit. It is really worthwhile.

Second is just transition. We have devoted significant moneys in this first round to just transition. Significantly, that is made up of €5 million for restoring bogs that are not in Bord na Móna ownership, €6 million for a just transition fund and €20 million to create an aggregated retrofitting model in the midlands. This will be aimed at mobilising the sort of work we need to do on an area basis in the midlands, looking at particular areas and starting with the social homes to ensure that those who are living in social homes and are on low incomes get an opportunity to upgrade. Also, off the shoulder of that we must include other families that can engage in an upgraded system. We are designing that plan and want to roll it out as quickly as possible. Third, we must increase our expenditure on all the various schemes, such as sustaining the electric vehicle subsidy, doubling the amount of public chargers for electric vehicles, increasing the amount of money devoted to all the adaptation grants that are available for retrofitting homes and so on. Every cent of that money is being ploughed back to ensure we get that mobilisation.

I am reporting progress almost six months in to say the train has moved from the station. We have real momentum and support in the wider community. People will be worried about the impact it may have on their sector and we have to work through that but there is a genuine willingness for people to get involved in this. It strikes me as similar to many of the big constitutional changes we have managed to make in this country. The reason older people like myself, although I do not feel like I am in that category, have changed their minds on a lot of these big constitutional issues is because younger people have changed and influenced the way we think about them. This is very much true in the case of the climate debate and the challenges we have here. Younger people are influencing our generation and rightly pointing the finger at us that we are the generation who will pass on this globe in a worse condition than we found it. We will be the first generation to have done that and we have huge responsibility to build the momentum around this plan and to deliver it for our children and for the generations after them.