Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and thank him for his, as always, very thoughtful presentation and for sharing with us his ambition. Maybe I am not as taken as others by his presentation today because I have had the benefit of working with him on committees for years, and I have seen the diligence and the approach that he has taken, which has continued here today. I thank him for that.

There is no shortage of ambition and no shortage of desire among the Irish public about addressing climate change. That, to me, is probably the biggest shift in the past ten or 15 years. When Roger Garland was first elected here as a lone member of the Green Party, many people were surprised about the agenda at that time, but it has grown to become part of the political lexicon. For sure, people recognise the impact that the way we live our lives is having on the climate, and they see how it impacts so negatively on them.

There ends the consensus. As we talk to people, and even when listening to the different contributions from the various sides here today, everybody has a solution but it is not to come from the people they think they represent. If anything, what we should try to do, in the way the Minister has always done throughout his career, is try to bring people with us, and that requires getting compromise from our own people as well. I am often taken by a level of laziness that exists in the vernacular among certain commentators or the commentariat within certain sections of the media. The first question is usually, “So when do we cut the national herd?” That immediately divides urban and rural, and it has made an urban-rural divide again. This is where we have to be extremely careful in regard to bringing people with us.

I have great respect for Senator Boylan from the Sinn Féin Party and her commitment to addressing climate change. I worked on a committee previously where her party were really engaged with the committee and did fantastic work, but when it came to accepting the principle of a carbon tax, which is recognised right across the world as the way to go, there was immediately a rejection of it. I would have rejected it flat out too if the committee had not recommended responding in a way that Senator Boylan has rightly identified, namely, ensuring that people do not suffer from a poverty associated with fuel.

It is really important that we do not leave people behind us. In the community I have represented for many years, there is concern among the agricultural community that it will impact negatively on them. We talk about just transition, yet the Government still has not responded to the impact on the west Clare area and the fallout from the decision - the right decision - to end the burning of coal at Moneypoint. I accept it is not possible to get money to resolve every issue, but we have to resolve the big issues. Everybody will be affected in some way. The Minister, right from the get-go, has always said we should address the problems but try to mitigate to the greatest extent possible the problems for those who will be most affected, particularly those on low incomes and those depending on social welfare.

However, we cannot not let it all be about the negatives because there are real opportunities, and the real opportunities are in the green tech sector. We should be doing much more in regard to the capturing of wind offshore, but it is not just about capturing wind offshore. It is about getting in at the start of the wave of technological development that will see the activity sustained and will employ people for generations to come. It is not just about the negatives, the cost and the impact. That is there but we have to advance, in parallel, a vision that looks to the upside of that change.

We see it in regard to the potential for the greater use of rail, the greater use of airports outside the capital city, and the rebalancing of some of our air activity to Cork and to Shannon. We have to look too at the issue of wind turbines. This has become a very vexed position because much of the low-hanging fruit, to use that terrible term, has been captured at this stage, in that most of the sites that do not impact overly on the livelihoods and the lives of people have already been developed. Now, there is a lot of negative feedback from communities who do not want to see the further development of wind turbines. Therefore, we have to move very quickly to look at the alternative, and that is offshore, to my mind.

The nitrates directive has been addressed. Again, we have to be careful with regard to the farming community. I listened with interest on the radio today to a PhD researcher who was putting forward a comprehensive plan for addressing the impact of the agricultural sector on carbon emissions, looking at the genomic make-up of our herds and the diet of cattle, and looking at how the methane output from our national herd can be addressed. The research is looking at the targets and at having mitigation in place.It behoves us all to adopt a broad outlook to find solutions rather than look to our own constituents and seek to suggest that somebody else carry the burden. There has been a broad debate today and I look forward to my continued participation in that.