Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. As others have noted, his contribution set out the passion he, like me, has for this area. I am sure he will also agree, however, that accountability is an important part of climate legislation and that Governments can make all the promises it wants, but without reducing emissions and delivering a just transition, and if the Government is not held to account, the promises will not worth be the paper they are written on.

One of the main mechanisms for accountability in the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 is that the Minister comes before both Houses of the Oireachtas and debates the national transition statement. That is a progress report that sets out, among other matters, the details of mitigation and adaptation and the effectiveness of our emissions reductions. In 2016, 2017 and 2018, the annual transition statements were published and fairly swiftly debated but, unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the 2019 one . Here we are in December 2020 and we are debating the 2019 transition statement. I do not blame the Minister for the delay, given that the statement was not taken by him but by his predecessor. Perhaps the reason we did not have the debate on that statement earlier was there was an election in the offing and we knew that climate change was such an important issue that Fine Gael probably preferred not to draw attention to its record on climate change. We then had a pandemic in intervening period, but even then, the Dáil managed to have this debate in June.

While this raises questions about the aversion to scrutiny, the reason I raise this issue relates to the climate Bill. It shows the importance of getting climate legislation right in order that irrespective of who is in government, they will be held to account. The Minister is appearing before the House under the provisions of the previous climate Bill, the 2015 Act, but in the future he will be here under the next climate Bill, so I will turn my attention to that. As has been pointed out, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action has been scrutinising the climate Bill carefully. We have spent more than 30 hours on the subject. I think the Minister will accept there was a push to rush it through . He asked that we would give only two weeks to pre-legislative scrutiny.

We have listened to all the experts and they have been crystal clear that accountability is critical if we are to have any chance of meeting our targets. The experts also told us that we need a robust framework in respect of how those targets are set and of how we hold people to account. During the pre-legislative scrutiny, we heard that the Bill presented to us was flimsy, non-binding and full of loopholes and weasel words. It had a dangerous reliance on negative emissions and the targets within were inadequate for meeting our obligations under the Paris Agreement. Those are not my words or criticism; they come from the most eminent environmental law and climate academics in this country and outside it. When one expert was asked how the Bill compared with other international examples, he put it in football terms. He stated that the Bill, as it stands, would be in the relegation zone of the league table, but that if we get it right, it could put Ireland among the leaders in terms of climate change legislation.

I hope the Minister will take on board the recommendations that came from both those testimonies to the committee and also, hopefully, from the committee's report on the pre-legislative scrutiny. We cannot continue to be a laggard. I know the Minister understands that but, as Senator Moynihan noted, we are not convinced that his partners in government understand that. We have been ranked 19th in the EU, just above countries with heavy industries such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. We are falling short of all our international commitments. The experts also raised concerns about the absence of any mention of the just transition. We heard international examples of how that can be incorporated. That there was no mention in the Bill of a just transition is deeply concerning and I hope the Minister, again, will take that on board. The report from Oxfam yesterday showed that while the transition is under way, it is not a just one. Oxfam reported that lower and middle income people have cut their consumption emissions but that the richest 10% have grown theirs. To address climate action we have to address wealth and consumption.

We also have to address energy poverty. Whole cohorts of people in society are falling between the stools in respect of supports against energy poverty. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul is spending €5 million a year supporting families. I have been conducting an energy poverty survey and the findings are stark. People have told me they are choosing between food and heat. A response from the Minister's office to a parliamentary question recommended that families change supplier. With respect, that is very difficult to do if someone does not have a credit rating and it is a market-based solution. Renters and people with disabilities are more likely to live in poorly insulated homes, while young families with mortgages who may be just over the threshold for the warmer homes scheme cannot afford to retrofit their homes.

I ask the Minister to take on board the statements from those academics to the committee. He has an opportunity to redraft the Bill and to make it the gold standard of international climate Bills. The nation is putting our faith in him to do that.