Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I very much appreciate the contributions by all the Senators. I will try to reflect on some of the questions, answer them if I can and comment on some of the contributions. I will start with Senator Fitzpatrick who was right in stating that a key in this transition is the health benefits that accrue from the decarbonisation. In terms of the analysis that has been done, for example, in retrofitting, the Senator is right, in that the effects on asthma and lung disease are dramatic. There are huge co-benefits from making this transition.

I want to reassure Senator Higgins, and agree with her, that this fund is only a small part relative to the jigsaw we will have to put in place to make this transition work. It is one fund. It tends towards innovation, experimentation and new technologies that might not make the commercial yardstick but which, by advancing them might give us the scale or the experience to allow them to become much more common. To answer the Senator's question, under section 15 and the proposed new section 37B(8), there is the mechanism, as she suggested, to allow other European or Exchequer funds to go into the fund. It could be added to not just from the levy but from other sources. That is very much required.

I agree with Senator Boylan on the need for aviation taxes and in respect of shipping. That has to be handled at an international and European level. She will be aware of the task involved in that. We are closer to it in Europe than people had thought. It may be delayed somewhat by the Covid-19 crisis because the aviation industry is in such a downturn but I agree with her that we should be looking at that mechanism. Also, with regard to front-loading of investment, the way this is structured there is a front-loading in the fund in the sense that the National Oil Reserves Agency has a remaining cash pile, as it were, of approximately €200 million.That will be used by the National Oil Reserves Agency in the first few years if it has to buy any additional stocks for us to meet our international obligations under European Union and International Energy Agency agreements. This means that the vast majority of levies collected over the coming years will go into the fund, which can then be disbursed.

The spending of the fund is not a function of availability but of how quickly projects can get up and running. I will provide an example. I agree with and appreciate Senator Moynihan's comments regarding our colleagues on Dublin City Council. An example of a project for which funding has already been agreed is the district heating scheme in Dublin, towards which €20 million has been allocated. In truth, we have not seen this project advance as quickly as I would have liked. The same could be said of a whole variety of projects. Dublin City Council will really need to provide resources to match this funding to progress this project and perhaps even to think more ambitiously about how it and district heating generally might work. It may be the case that it could be extended further rather than being limited to its current scale.

I absolutely agree with Senator Hoey. This must be a just transition and we must prioritise measures that result in social progress and address fuel poverty and inequality.

I could not agree more with Senator Seery Kearney. Her analysis of the history of the bus service in the areas she referred to was very interesting. I would go even further back. The very first rail service came from that south west direction and into the city. It was initially drawn by horse and cart. That need has always been there and it is a strategic objective. As much as I agree with the project, it will not be provided for under this fund. It must be investigated in the first instance by the National Transport Authority. The options must be examined, including the options of running south east along the existing line and of running south west. That is the appropriate way to progress. This fund cannot be used to fund all the projects we might want to fund. I do not disagree with the Senator's analysis that running MetroLink further than the currently envisaged end point is absolutely necessary.

I thank Senator Pauline O'Reilly for her comments. If one was to take any of the Aran Islands as an example, Inis Mór is a good choice. It shows a variety of things, including that things take time, that mistakes are often made along the way, and that things can stop and start again. That Aran Islands project is, however, as good as any. It is very measurable because one can measure the fuel going out to an island. This fund is similar in a sense. One of the amendments to whose purpose I signalled I hoped to come back, in the name of Deputy Whitmore, specifically targeted community resilience projects of that nature. While it is not provided for in the Bill, I agreed with the Deputy that we would come back to the idea of specifically targeting community-led community resilience projects in a later Bill, possibly the climate action fund Bill. The project on the Aran Islands was one of the first and is still a very good example.

I regret that Senator Murphy is no longer in the Chamber as I wished to thank him for his kind words. I could not agree with him more; it cannot be a case of us and them. As I told Deputy Healy-Rae during yesterday's debate in the Dáil, this will be good for rural Ireland, including Roscommon and Longford. It has to be. Many of these energy projects will be located in rural Ireland. It is hard to site an energy project in my constituency because of the density of the urban environment. They can be sited in rural Ireland, however. I absolutely agree with the Senator that this cannot be a case of them and us.

To answer Senator Ward's point, the reason we are progressing at this unseemly speed - I would prefer it to be done in the ordinary time - is that if we can get it passed today and then passed in the Dáil next week, we can get it to the President straight away. It will fly out to the Phoenix Park. We aim to commence the Act on 1 August. That allows a contribution of €10 million for that month to go straight into the fund. I was talking about front-loading. A sum of €10 million is not small. That is why we are putting this Bill through over such a short period.

I hope Senator Craughwell will be out on his bike a lot more often in light of some of the measures introduced with regard to Covid-19.Senator Currie also asked whether we could use the opportunity Covid-19 presents to change the transport system or the remote working system. These are different pieces of the jigsaw to be solved somewhere else. This is really about energy efficiency rather than transport or remote working. They fit into the national economic plan and that is where we need to do it.

I thank Senator McGahon for the kind words about Mark Dearey and my colleagues in Dundalk. The Senator got it right in terms of focusing on energy efficiency and the lighting scheme in the local authority. Energy efficiency has to come first. The metaphor I always use is that we put the plug in the bath before we fill it. That is not very exciting; it will hardly give us a politician up a pole cutting a ribbon on an LED light bulb but that scale of innovative new thinking is what we should be looking for.

I reassure Senator Kyne that the reason for the amendment, as we will come to in the discussions, is to recognise that there will be some instances where there will not be competitive tendering. In the vast majority of cases we want a competitive tendering process so it will not be about political favours. However, there are certain projects, such as bog rehabilitation, where there is not a market. For a specific bog rehabilitation process where there cannot be, by definition, competition, we want a mechanism. It will not be done through competitive tendering but there will be a call for a specific project to be advanced. This is what the amendment is there to allow. In particular, it recognises that the midlands is where we have to do the just transition first.

To go beyond this, Bord na Móna going from brown to green is a real possibility for the company. The question being asked locally is the correct one, with regard to what we will do with the power stations. They have grid connection links and Bord na Móna has real expertise in energy. Perhaps this can be deployed in a new hydrogen economy. Certainly, it should be applied in the renewable economy. Bord na Móna will start doing this as well as bog rehabilitation. I look forward to visiting Senator Carrigy in Longford.

This fund is designed for thinking outside the box about new sustainable ways of using some of these facilities. These could be quite small. It could be a series of small things such as community projects. It could also be big and really outside the box. There is no limit in terms of the applications so people should think big. If a project really starts to make sense we will be able to draw down funding from Europe as well as from this levy or, indeed, we could go to the Exchequer to look for further funding. This is what the levy should trigger. It is only one piece in a series of legislation that we will need.

I think I heard Senator Boylan speak yesterday about the climate action committee. To my mind, it will be critical in contributing. I worked with Senator Higgins on that committee for many years and it was a very good committee. It is through that committee, with Senators, that we should be working together to see how we deploy the fund.