Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and the message from the Dáil in regard to section 6A. It was an oversight. Albeit some may say it was not strictly needed, I think it ties up the entire Bill really well. It was always the intention of the Government, in drafting this Bill, to ensure that Ireland is obliged not just to meet its international obligations, but to go beyond that in many instances and to be consistent with those international obligations in regard to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, and the Paris Agreement. That is what this amendment is about. It is about ensuring that everything the Minister and the Government do is related back to and consistent with our international obligations. I do not think anybody could have any difficulty with that.

I was very disappointed, to be honest, with some of the commentary, particularly in the Dáil. The amendments that this House put before the Dáil included amendments around just transition and around responding to the Stop Climate Chaos request to remove the definition we had of climate justice, yet most of the Opposition voted against those amendments, as well as the other amendments. I would argue that the amendment we put down in regard to ensuring that the Government had to have regard to EU rules was the correct one because there was nothing to preclude us from having regulations around our accounting, whereas those rules now have to be consistent with the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement, thanks to this amendment, and have to have regard to the EU rules.

I thank the Minister for bringing forward all of these things. As Senator Garvey said, this is momentous. The Green party has worked on this for more than 40 years, as have environmentalists. This is one of the most ambitious Bills across the globe; it is objectively seen as such and most environmentalists have also said it is one of the most ambitious. Fundamentally, at its very heart, it is about reaching zero emissions by 2050 and, regardless of any of the amendments, that one thing is going to be challenging for us. What this Bill does is to strengthen an advisory council that will advise us in coming up with carbon budgets and climate action plans, and also, very significantly, strengthen all of the public participation that has to go into coming up with those plans.

As I said, some of the commentary has been very disappointing. A particular party, Sinn Féin, actually put forward a budget last year that did not even mention climate, bar mentioning the name of the Department. Let us recognise the fact and the work that this Government and the Green Party has done for those decades in coming up with this. We would absolutely not be as enthusiastic and excited about this if it was not as ambitious as it is, and if we had not put a year into drafting this, but there are also the decades behind the work we have done, across all of the environmental movements in which we have all been involved and in which our children have been involved. Let us celebrate today because it is a good day. I would question anyone who would say that it is not.