Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I had held back, but I want to offer something in the crucial debate we are having. We will end up debating these points again when we discuss section 7. The question about just transition is important. Senator Lombard put it well when he talked about the idea of the template. I believe there are two layers to just transition. One is that it is a transition towards justice, towards something better. Ending fur farming is a good thing. Just as the big changes we will need to make in the area of climate are to something that is better, we also need to do it in a way that is just and fair. I want to highlight those two parts to it.

There are many things we will need to stop doing and need to do differently. It will not be business as usual in many areas for many reasons - for climate reasons but also because of how the world is radically changing in many ways. Because we cannot do things in the same way and because business as usual may be dangerous, we need to have just transition, which needs to be fair and fast. When we talk about just transition, the idea seems to be to delay moving on it for ages, when in fact we need to move on things and change them fast. We need to put good systems in place which deliver fairness which, as Senator Lombard said, can be used as a template for other sectors and other industries. This is a chance to look to those principles and get it right.

There is much discussion about the mechanisms of compensation for the businesses. In implementing just transition anywhere, we need to give as much focus to the workers as we do to business owners.The lacuna is that there has not been the same focus on the workers. I was glad the Minister of State mentioned certain case workers and other schemes and it would be useful for all of us in the House to have information about that between this debate ending today and resuming again. I remember discussing that issue with Senator Doherty when she was in her former role and we said we could not wait for sectors to end. We should not wait until they are in the Intreo office as individuals. We should offer collective supports like the SOLAS scheme, as suggested by Senator Gavan, when groups of workers are involved. We need particular measures that are targeted to support those workers and we must get in there with those schemes ahead of the closure of businesses so that we are not waiting until people are just individuals on jobseeker's payments. Rather we must recognise them when they are a collective group of people who are important to their communities and deliver solutions that will work for them.

The other part of just transition we need to look to is to make sure we deal with things like inadvertent consequences. Demolition was mentioned and it is important that we do not create a perverse incentive to encourage demolition, for example, when we know the embodied energy from that is so great. We must look to the winding down of businesses and sectors and part of that is thinking, not just from the compensatory point of view but also from the environmental point of view, about how we would do that in a responsible way. For example, we should not just compensate people for demolition but if they repurpose they should also be getting funding to support that repurposing because we know that fits our environmental goals. At the moment there is only an option of potential compensation for demolition even though everybody has highlighted the problems with it, rather than compensation for repurposing for example. It is about repurposing, finding a new purpose and finding new opportunities for workers, businesses and industries. It has been a thoughtful discussion and this is a chance for us to get the template on just transition right. I hope we might even have a situation where the Minister of State would bring proposals back on Committee Stage.

The statutory redundancy period of two weeks is not enough. It needs to be more like six weeks. We need to bring in the kind of thing workers should and do negotiate so that they genuinely have the base they need to start in new areas of employment and work in their areas and communities. I imagine and hope that Members across the House will bring proposals on how we can improve section 7. I hope the Minister of State will do so as well and we might have an opportunity to tease these things out in the time ahead.