Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. Sinn Féin's approach to this Bill has been to table sensible and workable amendments to improve it and make it fairer. We want to make sure the decisions taken to meet the emissions targets contained in the Bill are progressive and fair and have local communities at their core. Again, on this Stage, we are submitting several amendments. They deal with definitions of just transition, climate justice and a ban on the importation of fracked gas.Many of these efforts have been in vain. Only one Opposition amendment has been supported. I hope today will be a new approach from the Government and the Minister in charge. I also hope that presenting amendments from the Opposition in a unified way will help with that. I thank colleagues and their staff for their co-operation and also my colleague, Senator Boylan, who cannot be here now, but who may be in later.

Amendment No. 1 is simple. It relates to the Title to the Bill. The basis behind it is that we need to limit the power of corporations to scupper serious climate action. Fossil fuel companies have an ace in the hole in the form of investor-state dispute mechanisms such as those in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA. The amendment seeks to limit that threat. The Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Green Party Government tried to rush through a motion before Christmas to ratify the investor court system chapters of CETA. This would have massive ramifications for every aspect of life in Ireland, not least that relating to climate action. It is only right, therefore, that we are debating these ramifications in the context of the climate Bill.

These investor court mechanisms play an outsized role in any state's ability to tackle climate change. They allow companies to sue states for actions taken to address climate change. Such cases result in massive compensation claims in the billions being made by companies against states for taking bold climate action. I mentioned some of these examples and Senator Higgins spoke on this matter at length on Committee Stage. I outlined actions taken by fossil fuel companies in Italy, France and the Netherlands on foot of bold climate action taken by those countries. Russia was ordered to pay €50 billion to a fossil fuel company. Not only does that remove resources that a state could use for progressive climate action, it also has a massive and chilling effect on other states who see what happens to the countries that take bold action. We will not stand a chance of fighting climate change if we do not curb the grotesque excess of corporate power. We saw already this week how ideologically wedded Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party are to ensuring profits for cuckoo fund investors over housing for average citizens. Applying the same corporate-first ideology to climate action amounts to a death wish. We need serious climate action and that means taking on corporate power, not paying out billions in compensation to fossil fuel investors for taking climate action and blocking investor courts in CETA.

Amendment Nos. 13 and 14 seek to address the hypocrisy at the heart of section 4, which precludes individuals from seeking compensation in the State for failure to comply with the legislation and take sufficient action in respect of climate change. The same limitations that are not imposed on investors, however. Under the investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms of the trade and corporate rights agreements, investors can seek compensation from states for damages and compensation on foot of progressive ambitious climate action by banning drilling for fossil fuels. Not only can investors sue for compensation for investment loss, they can also sue for profits that they would have made. This sort of extravagant compensation claim would be laughed out of our courts but this is exactly what happens under investor-state dispute mechanisms. If the State decided to cease the extraction of gas in Irish waters, the company involved might, somewhat justifiably, bring it to court for the value of the investments in infrastructure it had made. Under trade agreements such as CETA, the company could sue for the value of the oil that hey were not able to extract and the profits that they would have made on it. I urge the Minister to accept either amendment No. 13 or 14.