Seanad debates

Friday, 17 July 2020

National Oil Reserves Agency (Amendment) and Provision of Central Treasury Services Bill 2020: Second Stage

 

10:30 am

Photo of John McGahonJohn McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and congratulate him on his new role. As my party spokesperson on climate, communications, energy and natural resources, I am looking forward to working with him in the next couple of years. Indeed, I was talking to a former colleague of the Minister's in Dundalk a couple of hours ago, Mark Dearey, who is a former Member of this House. I worked very closely with him on Louth County Council and had a wonderful relationship with both him and Councillor Marianne Butler, so I am very much looking forward to working with the Minister.

This legislation is quite straightforward and simple. We are repurposing the NORA levy and directing it towards funding for much more worthwhile projects under the climate action fund. The climate action fund will support initiatives that will contribute to the achievement of Ireland's climate and, more importantly, energy targets. I was examining this last night and it offers the potential for interventions for which funding would not be available without this fund. That is an important point we all must recognise. The seven projects we have been discussing would not be able to proceed without the funding from this body.

I listened to the speeches on Second Stage in the Dáil in the convention centre and some of the comments made by the Deputies were quite disingenuous. They tried to say that the seven projects were a little too Dublin-centric.Of course, this fits into the narrative they want to put forward to show that rural Ireland is somehow missing out. As someone from the town of Dundalk, County Louth, I can certainly say that that is not the case with this legislation because, and I will be quite clear about this, the expressions of interest clarification note for the climate action fund was clear. I will quote from it in order to put it on the record of the House:

[The Department] is not selecting or focusing on any type of organisation, project or technology [or geographical area]. The CAF is not in the style of a tendering process; instead it is up to organisations to apply with what they believe is the best Climate Action idea. Fundamentally, the CAF is a competitive process in which [the Department] seeks to support a project, or group of projects, that will have the best impact across a range of indicators in achieving a low carbon climate resilient economy.

That is what the Government said in black and white, so it is very disingenuous of Members of the other place to try to suggest otherwise.

Of the seven projects already approved, three stand out as being quite impressive. The first was a €15 million investment in the new hybrid power packs for the intercity railcars. This has already been trialled with them. The concept went very well and the investment will now be rolled out to all our intercity rail fleet. That will take anyone on a train from Dundalk, Wexford, Athlone, Cork or Limerick to Dublin. It will really reduce diesel use and greenhouse gas emissions and benefit thousands of commuters at the same time.

The second project I really liked was the local authority public lighting energy-efficiency project. The concept is to retrofit 326,000 non-LED lights throughout the country. I have already seen how effective this has been in my part of the world, County Louth. Louth County Council has embarked on a really ambitious project of replacing nearly all non-LED lights. It is doing so well. The county council has to be commended on this project. The project alone - and this is the most important point to note about non-LED lights - will see an emissions reduction of over 40,000 tonnes of CO2from electricity generation per annum.

The third project I wish to speak about is really good and something in which I have always had a strong interest throughout my time in politics. I refer to the €10 million for the ESB e-cars. The project will essentially help to develop a nationwide charging system. This is perhaps one of the most important parts of what the climate action fund will be able to do because it is crucial we direct even more funding towards this. I am 29 years of age. I look at my friends and think that the uptake of e-cars will not improve until people can realistically get from Dublin to Cork without experiencing battery anxiety or the fear that if they get to Portlaoise and pull over to recharge, the charging stations will not be working. Will someone be parked in the charging station while having lunch inside? The only way we can change the culture and people's minds, say this is the way to go and bring people with us is to pump so much funding into electric vehicle charging areas that the concept of battery anxiety will be a thing of the past and people will not even consider it when they consider buying e-cars. The more charging points we can create and the quicker the better because it will take an effort to change people's minds and bring them along with us.

A final point about this, and one I made recently when I was on Louth County Council, is that it is very important local authorities come to the Minister with roadmaps of their own local authorities, counties and administrative areas and say, "Minister, if you give us X amount of money tomorrow morning, this is exactly where we will roll out our electric charging points." It would be incumbent on the Minister and his Department to turn around and say, "Okay, we will do this, providing you put in X number of charging spaces", and give the local authority a timeframe by which this would have to be completed before they would lose the funding. That would put the onus back on the local authorities to deliver this at a local level, where, with all due respect to the Minister, they know best.

Those are just three projects out of the seven that will benefit everybody on this island, whether one lives in Dublin city centre or up the side of a mountain in Kerry. I wish to put that on the record of this House because it is so disingenuous of other people, for the sake of their own political narratives, to try to suggest otherwise.

I will wrap up. I know I have two minutes left, unlike yesterday, when the clock was going the other way. My point is-----

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