Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support the progress of the Bill in solidarity with my Green Party colleagues because I believe it deserves more consideration on Committee Stage, but that is not to say that I do not have concerns about it. For example, surely there is a legitimate question over whether any substantial alterations to an existing structure should be exempted from planning permission. Why should any particular type of alteration be exempt? One might argue solar panels and the harnessing of solar power is something about which we should do everything we can to encourage as a matter of public policy, and that may well be true. Instinctively we would all support that. However, I would argue this might be the thin end of the wedge in that, if we exempt one particular type of alteration from planning permission, it might encourage others. It might encourage future governments to start granting exemptions for other types of alterations which might be desirable or fashionable or seen to be at a particular time.

The Green Party has rightly raised many objections in the past to aspects of the planning system that are pro-developer, which take too little account of heritage or aesthetic value of developments, and so on. This Bill seems to go against that grain somewhat by allowing alterations to buildings without a thorough examination of their necessity or their aesthetic value. I would have a concern about that.

While I do not profess to be an expert on solar panels or their installation, is it not fair to say they can be very unsightly? I heard what Senator Seery Kearney said but I put the question nonetheless. As such, should people not have the chance to object to their installation on a neighbouring or nearby property on those reasonable grounds in order at least that their objection might be heard?

Also, as I understand it, there are a number of downsides to their use. For example, I know they can be costly, both to install in the first place and to store the energy derived from them. They take up a lot of space in terms of the surface area needed for the panels. They are weather dependent, which as we know can be a major problem in Ireland. There seems to be an environmental cost associated with the production of solar panels, both in the carbon footprint of production and transportation of them, but there are also some hazardous materials used in making them. I say all this not to rain on anyone’s parade, pardon the pun, but simply to do my job, which is to try and point out the strengths and weaknesses of particular proposals, or at least to encourage further scrutiny, and to point out that we have a long history of holding up particular practices or means of energy production as being a panacea or a model of best practice only for the flaws in them to be exposed years later.

I have said here before that recent decades are littered with proposals which were once adopted almost as dogma only to be abandoned subsequently. I am old enough to remember when there was unanimous consensus between all parties about the need to utilise bioethanol as an alternative to petroleum fuels. The international green movement, and later national governments, including our own Government, have since abandoned this position since it would have diverted resources away from food production in a world where around 700 million people are undernourished or starving. Diesel cars were once encouraged as an alternative and taxed at a lower rate accordingly, but this has since been abandoned, something which causes great resentment to this day to those who invested in diesel cars back in the day.

The State once gave generous grants for wood pellet boilers as a low-carbon alternative, and this position has also been abandoned, with many of the boilers ripped out of homes and, I believe, the company which did most of the work having gone bankrupt. All of these policies were abandoned and not much in the way of a mea culpafrom those who pushed them at the time. I am not suggesting people go around in sackcloth and ashes but acknowledgement would be important. This is what happens when we adopt short-term, quick-fix policies, perhaps in a spirit of idealism but without sufficient care in reflecting about them at the time.

Electric cars are now in vogue, but there are already serious concerns about their impact due to the need for lithium in batteries, which leads to intensive mining and the exploitation of workers. Will we look back in a decade’s time, after years of the installation of solar panels without planning permission, realising we have made a similar mistake? We need to think more about this, as good as it might appear on the outside.

I heard my colleague, Senator McDowell, make a great point in the House last week on the climate action Bill, that adherence to climate action is almost becoming an alternative religion in some quarters. This point was made very eloquently by Maria Steen writing in The Irish Timesa couple of years ago. Out of curiosity I tuned into the new GB News channel during the week and happened to see an interview with Roger Hallam, founder of Extinction Rebellion.I have quoted his positions in the past, which have a distinctly religious zeal around them. His views are so extreme that the movement he founded has since disassociated itself from him. The party left him, so to speak, but it just shows the sort of rhetoric that much climate policy can be built on from time to time.

The installation of solar panels, and the questions about it, is, in many ways, a First World issue. In fact, it is the very definition of a First World issue. As I mentioned in my contribution on the climate change Bill last week, there is precious little focus on what we might be doing to protect those who are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, who are invariably poorer people in poor, dry, developing, industrialised or low-lying countries. I quoted Maria Steen earlier. She summed up the climate action policies of western governments very well when she said:

...it is the rich who shall inherit the Earth, living in their A-rated houses and driving their electric cars. The poor in developing countries – who often suffer from unreliable electricity supplies...will be told “Too bad – no coal or oil-powered electricity for you."

Who said, "The meek shall inherit the earth"?The other version if it was, "The meek shall inherit the earth, if that is alright with you fellas". This is the outcome we risk. Many of our climate policies focus on the needs and actions of well-off people like ourselves in well-off countries, almost to salve our own consciences it sometimes seems, instead of focusing resources on helping those who will be most affected.