Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am concerned by the unwillingness to set a ceiling or limits in terms of the removals. I am concerned about the loss of emissions from our soil, forestry and peatlands. Urgent action is required in that regard. There is a need to ensure payment. I recognise that farmers are on the front line. They have key work that needs to be rewarded. The Minister said the benefit comes to the State in terms of the reduction of emissions. That should be recognised by the State because it is the sequestering and reductions in emissions that will allow the State to meet its targets and, if we are talking financially, avoid very large fines, which we have been facing for not reaching our targets. However, it is also important that we set limits. We must not have any danger - and I am worried about the danger - of an idea whereby we keep business going as usual while doing other things to make up for it. It needs to be a case of emissions reduction and removal, and we need to have hard measures on emissions reduction as well as removal and sequestration. When the Government is making the regulations mandated under the section, the Minister should engage with the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action on them. He should engage widely to ensure there is potential to put a limit on the use of removals within the regulations. That would be appropriate.

Regarding the idea of the trading schemes, we know the position from housing. Trying to let the market solve our housing problems has not worked out very well. If we try to fit climate action into the stock market model, we will fail and the world will burn. That is just clear as day. Therefore, we need to be careful. Ireland uses offsets at the moment. Our use of offsets has allowed us to keep doing things we should not really be doing. I do not want us to facilitate other countries to use offsets to avoid making the changes they need to make. Therefore, we need to be really clear. Every country needs to be doing everything it can do. We should not use offsetting to either limit our own ambition and responsibility or limit the responsibilities and actions of others. There are roles within the State for recognising carbon credits; I want to be clear on that. It is important to recognise the role of ecological care because it is sometimes a matter of ecological care, not just the measurement of carbon units solely when we talk about sequestration.

The Minister mentioned the integrated approach. I hope it will be reflected. When I went to Madrid, it was funny in that one could not get people to talk about the biodiversity convention at all; rather, they talked about trees, seaweed, mangroves and units of kelp.That is the nature services approach as opposed to the nature-based solutions model whereby one takes different approaches to how we might store different carbon and the information is broken down on spreadsheets. When you do that, you lose the forest. I have stated previously, in the context of the debate on forestry, that an investment firm claimed that trees were one of the best things it had invented. That company did not invent trees. As part of the regulations on removals and how we measure carbon sequestration, it is extremely important that we integrate those biodiversity benefits and that we do not just look at them as extra benefits which may happen to occur but, rather, that we include them. Many of the environmental champions of biodiversity have sometimes been villianised as if they are delaying climate action when they are pushing for an integrated approach. The devil will be in the detail in the context of these regulations. I am of the view that the issues of biodiversity and limits on removals may need to be considered as part of the process.