Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Garvey. If I make take a minute or two - that is all it will take - I would like to thank my officials in the Department, who have done their country proud and the public service proud in the work they have done on this Bill and on the wider agenda. I thank all Members of the Oireachtas. We will work together. This is our common goal. It is does not belong to anyone. I heard each Senator say that. We will now work together to implement this. That will be key. The approach will be collaborative. It will not work if everyone is not working together. This is a leap of such scale that it will not work if we do it in a divisive way. We have to work collaboratively as we implement what we are committing to here. What we are committing to is no small change. It is a great challenge.

I am inspired by one small thing. Senator Dooley and I were in Offaly yesterday, visiting a Bord na Móna facility where 850 new jobs are to be created. Before we did that, we went out on the bog in the morning. There was a digger blocking an open drain that had been put in place to extract the peat. The fella operating the digger had previously worked extracting the peat. It was the same really skilful job. He was very happy for his skills to be used in this new way. We then went out on the bog. It was incredible. This bog has been undergoing rehabilitation for 15 or 20 years. It takes time but, as you walk out, you can sense that nature is coming back. Nature is strong if we give it space to restore itself. I felt an incredible sense of hope because of the diversity of wildlife on that bog arising from its restoration. We are going to pay farmers to use their skills to restore bogs. While not every area is bog, we are going pay people well to skilfully manage land and our connection to it to get this right. These are skilled tasks.

From there, we went on to a large wind farm owned by Bord na Móna. It gave me such hope. We have an auction system for renewables and agreement was only reached in respect of this wind farm last October. Some nine months later, €100 million was being spent on the site, where 200 people were working. It is quite big. The local community is right behind it because they know and trust Bord na Móna. They have been working with the company for 80 years. It knows energy. We are switching from chimneys to turbines. We are creating in areas where we have an advantage. We can and will be good at this. It is going to be difficult and will require great skill, imagination and effort but, working collectively, we will do it. I thank Senators of all parties for their help. The Oireachtas committee had a very significant role in shaping this Bill, which I acknowledge. It is strong and it will make us strong as we work together from here.