John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It has become common courtesy that when a Minister comes into the House the first words uttered by Members are platitudes stating how great it is to have the Minister in but I genuinely enjoy it when this Minister comes into this House. Of all the Ministers who come into this House, it is clear he is very much on top of his brief, he is earnest in what he wants to do and his ambition is completely unparalleled for the job we need to do. It is a pleasure to see him come in here without a script or notes and be totally on top of his brief. It is impressive.

I am also a member of the Joint Committee on Climate Action. As a new parliamentarian, I find the concept of prelegislative scrutiny fascinating. We are in the middle of putting together legislation, going through detail line by line having listened to hours upon hours of expert testimony.There are people on that committee from my party, other political parties and none who are so much more experienced than I am and have spent years working in the sector and know it inside out. To be able to listen and learn from them is very beneficial to me as a new and younger parliamentarian.

My interest in climate action is with regard to transport. The Minister's comments were very reassuring. A point I want to make about electric vehicles, and I have said it before to the Minister in the House and on the Order of Business, is that it has broken my heart in recent times to see friends of mine invest in electric vehicles but after a year and a half they decide to pack it in and go back to petrol or diesel. The reason they did so was that it was just not feasible for them because the proper charging infrastructure is not there. I have a list of some of the financial investment by the State, including up to €2,500 for new plug-in hybrids, grants for installing chargers at home and VRT relief. We are providing many financial incentives, which are great and they are a great way to encourage people to do it. People see all of these financial aids and decide they will buy an electric vehicle. Then, all of a sudden, they realise they will struggle to get from Dublin to Cork or Dublin to Belfast because when they get to the charging points they are faulty or someone is parked in the space while inside having lunch. How do we change this? We do so by having a huge campaign and the Government is trying to do this with local authorities. We need a huge campaign on increasing the number of chargers and having them throughout the country. What I would love to see, and I believe we are trying to do it, is planning permission for new housing developments having to have electric vehicle charging points. Once we really reassure people that, for want of a better phrase, battery anxiety will be a thing of the past they will buy into it. We have listened to other Members. I have no doubt about Irish society. The green agenda has just exploded in the past 18 months and people are so excited about it. They want to take part in it but, as Senator Boyhan said earlier, it needs to be made as easy as possible for them. The way to do so is to make it as easy as we can to get from A to B.

I want to pick up on the point made by Senator Byrne, which is an issue I have raised on the Order of Business and I hope to have a Commencement matter on it soon. It is with regard to the smoky fuel ban. It is absolutely ludicrous that we have ten towns, including my home town of Dundalk, with a smoky fuel ban but people can still buy smoky fuels in the towns. It is virtually impossible for local authorities to enforce it. Perhaps they are sending a litter warden around to enforce the ban on smoky fuels. We need a total outright ban on it throughout the country. This would provide huge opportunities to hit the 7% targets we have set ourselves in the programme for Government.

CPL Fuels has met many Members of the House in recent weeks about this issue. This morning, in preparation for the debate, I read a paper it has prepared. It states the first step towards achieving the targets of 7% will be the banning the sale of smoky coal and it has to be a nationwide ban. Significant CO2 savings can be achieved if the solid fuel mix in Ireland moves to smokeless as a first step. We are speaking about a 0.9% reduction in total residential emissions. Ovoids containing 30% biomass would mean a 5.9% reduction in total residential emissions while ovoids containing a 50% biomass would mean a 9.3% reduction in total residential emissions.

In 2019, the State retrofitted 1,000 homes and it is acknowledged that 35,000 homes would need to be retrofitted to make a real dent and impact on our CO2 emissions at a significant level. A viable alternative to achieving these emission reductions in the residential sector at no cost to the State is mandating a switch to low carbon and solid fuels in homes, followed by the long-awaited smoky coal ban. The ambition the Government has is in no short measure a result of the Minister and his Green Party colleagues sitting at the Cabinet table and my Green Party colleagues being part of the Government. It is because of their ambition that they are dragging us along with them on points they have been advocating for decades. Let us be ambitious about it. Let us set out and achieve everything the Minister outlined in his opening statement today. We can absolutely do it. Society has bought into doing it. However, we have to make it as easy and simple as possible.