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

I read at the weekend that the Pope's Christmas reading list includes Kate Raworth's book Doughnut Economics, which is about how the transition to a low-carbon future will transform not just the environment but also our society and our economy for the better. I look forward to seeing what he reads after that.

I recognise that what we are discussing today is the assessment of 2019 and not this year's emissions. We are looking back historically, due to a variety of reasons, including the Covid crisis and the fact we did not have a Government from February to June. The former Minister, Deputy Richard Bruton, introduced the transition statement in the Dáil in June but this is the first opportunity the Seanad has had to discuss it. Due to the timing, we are looking at a 2019 annual transition statement. It is a useful opportunity to assess where we are. I will give my perspective in a few brief comments that will only really scratch the surface of where we are going.

We should first acknowledge the league table published the other day by Germanwatch, which is a significant and leading international NGO. On the issue of environment or climate, we were not exactly where we would want to be out of 57 countries, although we have improved. We had previously been the absolute worst in class at the very bottom. In recent years we increased somewhat to 41st out of the 57 and then increased again to 39th. The main reason we have not improved further is that our emissions trajectory has yet to decelerate. We have yet to see the reductions we need to make but that is about to change, for a variety of reasons. Even the details of that Germanwatch study acknowledged that we would jump 11 points if there was a league table in the category of policy development. It is now up to us to convert that into action and emissions reductions for the good of all our people, the country and the wider world.

It is possible to do that for a variety of reasons but primarily because there is political consensus that this is something we are going to do and should do as a country. That consensus is critical. When we have broad consensus in this country on our strategic direction we can be very effective in making a change. In the 1950s and 1960s we changed from a closed economy to an open economy because there was agreement on that strategy across the board in the public service and the political system. In the two or three decades after that, when we had a stable political environment around that consensus decision, we joined the European Union, invested in education and set up foreign direct investment systems. That worked. We became a very successful open economy. What we need to do now is convert from an unsustainable economy to a sustainable one. It will take us two or three decades of similar stability in order for each successive Government to advance the decisions we need to make to get there.

Some of the decisions we have already taken in the past two or three years give me hope. Four years ago we decided to set up a Citizens' Assembly on climate change. That process was hugely successful, very well researched and well presented, as was the analysis, and the hundred citizens who participated came back with radical measures that would set us on the right course. That was followed by the establishment of the Joint Committee on Climate Action, where a good number of Senators and Deputies from the previous Dáil and Seanad played a critical role. With that committee, we took the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly and turned them into a climate action plan of real scale and ambition. The NGOs widely acknowledge that. That, in turn, influenced the then Minister, Deputy Bruton, in the drafting of his 2019 climate action plan. While that plan was not ambitious enough and there are things in it I would criticise, I must acknowledge that it was still a quantum leap better than anything that had gone before. The plan before that one, the mitigation plan from 2017, has rightly fallen foul of living up to the ambitions of the 2015 climate Act in the courts system. Now we have a new Government and the proposal is to almost double the ambition contained in that 2019 climate action plan. We will look for at least a 7% per annum reduction in emissions, on average, over the next ten years and radically transform our economy and society in the process. I believe that is possible and that it will benefit our country and all our people.

Our current political environment will help us deliver this change. I am following this from a distance because I am not directly involved but the current Joint Committee on Climate Action is doing similar good work in assessing the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2020, which was published within the first 100 days of the Government. A number of commentators have said it needs to be strengthened in a variety of ways. I do not have a problem with that. Looking at legislation and, where necessary, changing language and considering alternative provisions and powers is part of our deliberative process. It is up to the committee to decide but I imagine it will publish its report at the end of this week or early next week and I look forward to responding to it in due course. It will probably be early in the new year by the time we manage to get the Government to come back with amendments, which I hope will reflect as much of the committee's report as possible.

I will summarise some of the key strategic choices being made, which will be necessary to meet this higher level of ambition, in descending order from where there is real agreement in the energy sector. There is agreement right across the political spectrum and among all parties that we need to switch to a renewable energy future. We must use that renewable electricity to power our transport system as well as heat our homes, and couple the development of renewables with real investment in energy efficiency by retrofitting at least 50,000 homes a year. In developing renewable power, we must also seek to develop solar power and offshore wind power at scale. There is some 35 GW of renewable power in offshore wind that we could tap into. We are on the path towards at least 70% of our power coming from renewable electricity by the end of this decade, which would put us at the forefront and cutting edge of what is possible.

However, there are things we will have to get right. I was talking to Senator Garvey when coming in here and I acknowledged that we have to learn from the mistakes being made with the location of wind farms. We must consider upland bogs in particular, given the environmental effects of bog loss damage we saw for the second time recently. I do not want to go into the details of any particular project but it is something to which we have to be attentive. We have to be attentive to the local environment and to public support. We do not want to cover the country in windmills but we will do it in a way that is co-ordinated and looks after our wider environmental objectives. I believe that is possible. Not only is wind power important for its own sake as an industry but the comparative advantage we have in low-cost wind power can deliver us a competitive advantage for industries in other areas, particularly in parts of the country that may have previously found it difficult to get investment.If we can locate the users of that power close to where it is going to be generated, then that could have significant benefits for balanced regional development. In the future that will be on the periphery of the country along the north-west coast, the west coast, the south-west coast and in the south east.

We could refer to myriad other projects. We have failed to date to develop solar power. Despite thinking and talking about it for the past several decades, we failed to support people to generate their own power. That needs to change, and it is starting to change. We saw the recent auction for renewables. We have the first seven community energy projects. We must expand that and go as far as we can in the direction of community ownership. In the new year the Government intends introducing a consultation process on the ability of people to generate their own power and to sell it from their own rooftop, business or house. I hope to have that in place by next summer. I could go on. There are myriad energy projects that we can and will deliver and that will help us to meet our targets.

The second area where we have had greater difficulty, and the figures for 2019 show this, is reducing transport emissions. In fact, they have been increasing significantly and now account for 20% of our overall emissions. The outgoing plan for 2019 is not ambitious enough in the area of transport. It cannot just be about switching from combustion vehicles to electric vehicles. We must change the entire transport system for the better. The motive for that is not just decarbonisation, it is also for a better society, better planning, and tackling the housing crisis as well as the climate crisis. The Government sets out the provision for this direction in terms of a switch towards public transport investment because that gives us the opportunity to have what we call transport-led development, where new housing is close to a high-frequency, high-quality public transport system. We must make that decision now and make it very clear that is where our investment is going in transport so that the development plans around the country in the coming months are steered in that direction and that developers and local authorities know that is where we need the emergency housing to go.

The national planning framework, which was produced in the previous Oireachtas, gives us the correct approach. It is about developing back towards the centre. It is also perhaps about using the Covid crisis – Lord knows when it will end – to build back better when we come out of it and develop the concept of the 15-minute city, town or village, where resources are all close together and they are accessible by active travel in a new form of urban design. This can apply to rural villages as much as it applies to cities. It is about changing everything.

It is also about changing the way all roads lead to Dublin and the excessive development of Dublin. A total of 90% of roll-on, roll-off freight traffic comes from Dublin Port. That is not balanced. Similarly, 90% of all air travel is through Dublin Airport. That is not balanced. Some 50% of new houses in 2019 were built in the counties surrounding Dublin, which could only be accessible by largely unsustainable transport systems in and out of the city. That is not sustainable, and it needs to change. We will do that by making sure some of the investment in the 2:1 ratio in favour of public transport goes into urban transport systems in Limerick, Cork, Galway and Waterford so that we get better balanced regional development. We will get a lower carbon solution, but we will also get a better economy and we will better implement the objectives set out in the national planning framework. That is going to be contentious. Whatever we are building, it is always difficult to get anything through planning. The BusConnects project in Dublin is going to be difficult. The metro project in Dublin will be difficult. Planning is always the element that takes the longest, but I believe we can get it right. It will also be contentious because some people will say they want the motorway rather than the railway. That is one of the critical decisions we must start making. As I stated, it is not enough to switch to electric vehicles, it is about designing our life so we can travel less, and that we have services closer to hand.

A critical element is the significant investment the Government is now committing, which is 20% of overall capital spending on transport on active travel, walking and cycling. Unless we get that modal shift, where we are matching what is going on in Holland, Denmark and elsewhere, we will not reach our climate targets. It is that scale of change that we are seeking and the benefits in health, efficiency and social life because the transport systems that apply are available for everyone.

I hope I am not speaking for too long, Acting Chairman. I want to cover what is a very wide area. I wish to refer to agricultural land use. Today, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine published Ag-Climatise, which is its summary of the provisions it was implementing in the previous climate action plan. That is not the limit of the ambition that will be required. I sent our national energy climate action plan to the European Union in July. I said they were the measures we introduced with a view to meeting the 2019 climate targets, and we will be coming back with further ambition in 2021 and that they were only the interim measures we have agreed in that direction. Similarly, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine today has outlined the measures Teagasc and others advised to meet our 2019 target, but in the first six months of next year we will have to go significantly further so that agricultural land use elements play their key part in meeting the climate change targets.

One of the most important elements within the Government's climate work is the development of the land use review. It is a top-down review of how we are using land in the country to help us direct not only how we decarbonise, which is critical, how we manage our bogs, what sort of forestry we have and where, what type of farming we have and where, but also how we restore biodiversity. We must tackle the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis together. The land use review plan must map how we reverse the destruction of nature that has taken place over the past five decades and longer. It must also take into account what we need to do to restore the pristine water systems. In the 1980s, 500 of our river courses were in pristine quality condition and that has reduced to 20. We all know that must change. If we do not get the water quality right, then insect life and other ecosystems are not right, and we are dealing with a degraded and depleted natural world. The land use plan must map that. In doing that, it can map what we might do on flood management. Managing forestry and the re-wetting of bogs may be a more effective, efficient and better way of managing the flood risks than just engineering solutions. We can use nature to help us tackle a whole range of different problems that face us at the one time.

Critical in any land use plan is the social part of it. It is the planning and modelling of where young people are going to get jobs in the future in rural areas. We must look at how we can give a guarantee that in the provision of services such as clean water, greater biodiversity, and a decarbonised system with high quality genuinely Origin Green food, we can pay young men or women in their early 20s to get a good income, raise a family and have a good home in their community in a rural area over the next 30 to 40 years because this is the way the world is going. This country and the European Union will pay for the skills and ability to work with nature and the use of nature to help us solve problems. That is going to be critical.

We will not start by telling farmers what to do. A land use plan is not there to say one must grow this in that field, it is about saying we want to support farmers and we will listen to them and ask them for help and suggestions about what they think will work. We will tap into the co-operative instinct that exists in Irish farming for centuries, which we are going to be good at in this decarbonised future. The land use plan is critical in terms of where we need to go. What we are doing is in tune with what the European Union is saying.

The multi-annual financial framework will be considered at the European Council meeting tomorrow. My understanding from my European colleagues is that the key issue will be to make sure that 30% of the overall multi-annual financial framework budget goes to decarbonisation, not just the recovery and resilience fund, but the main budget. In order to meet that target, the CAP will significantly change too. In the next year we also need to tie it in to agreements in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, process in how exactly we measure land use emissions. We must start to get credit for the work we are doing in restoring the bogs in the midlands. We must start looking to do the same right across the country.

The first question we asked at the Citizens' Assembly four years ago was how we can go from being laggards to leaders. This is the way. Biogenic methane counts, and it must be counted.Let us count it in a way that allows us to get credit when we have a really sustainable agricultural system that is good on animal health, and more family-farm oriented rather than industrial lots. We can be good at this. We can address the three objectives of ensuring we have a successful and thriving Irish agricultural system with a healthy environment, and a situation where Ireland goes to the top of the league table that is published every year by Germanwatch rather than sticking where we are at the moment in the bottom half of the league.