Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, Oxfam released another report that showed lower and middle-income people have cut their emissions while the richest 10% have grown theirs. These are EU figures but there is no reason to suspect that they do not hold true for Ireland. The words "just transition" are regularly thrown about but these figures suggest that the transition is anything but just. The rich go on flying more, driving bigger cars and having more homes, while low and middle-income people go on doing their bit.

Climate change is a bit like Covid-19. We hear we are all in this together and everyone must play their part but not everyone is doing so. There seems to be a narrative that climate change could have been fixed if only we all changed our lightbulbs and bought a keep-cup. This is despite all of the evidence that shows the bulk of the emissions from consumption are down to the lifestyle of the top 1%. A just transition must target high-wealth lifestyles and corporations.

This week, I signed up to a campaign called Make Amazon Pay. Amazon has a carbon footprint of 44.6 million tonnes of carbon and its subsidiary, Amazon Web Services, works with the fossil fuel industry to extract more carbon. Amazon avoids paying taxes, its employees are forced to work during a pandemic without personal protective equipment, PPE, while the wealth of Jeff Bezos has increased by 65% during the pandemic alone.

We have had decades of Government policies that have set us on the wrong path where it is always the poor who have to make the cuts while the rich lead increasingly lavish lifestyles. What has the Government done? We have had proposals to ban the two-for-one food deals when what we really need are policies that target consumption by the rich. Individuals must play their part but it not their fault that they are locked into a fossil fuel dependent system.

This House will soon debate the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill. I ask that the Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, listens to the Oxfam report, follows the evidence and ensures that just transition is placed at the centre of the Bill. I urge him to do all that when redrafting the Bill because the importance of getting this right cannot be overstated. We need a just transition to bring everybody along with us. If there is no just transition then we will not have any transition.