Vincent P Martin (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Heydon, to the Chamber. It is always good to have a Minister of State in the Chamber. Especially when that Minister of State is from Kildare, I have to make sure I warmly welcome him here.

I commend Fine Gael Members on their very considered wording of this motion. I commend Senators Seery Kearney and Dolan on their eloquent opening contributions. They are a credit to democracy and to their party.

I wish to make three points in the short time I have. I would like to address the issues of renewables, accommodation and what I hope is a seismic shift in the value system of the free world in how we respond to such barbaric atrocities. It is important for us to start to talk about what we need to do here in welcoming refugees from Ukraine. We need to be clear on what is required to help and support people fleeing war. The considered wording of this motion lays out fairly directly what the State needs to do, particularly in education, trauma support and work. Using the structure of the community call that we developed during the Covid pandemic has been beneficial. We need to ensure that the local authorities and volunteers are supported in this.

We need to be clear that renewables offer us a way out of this crisis. Increasing our reliance on gas and other fossil fuels only sets us up for failure again. Renewables are forces of peace. Buying fossil fuels from Russia, indirectly or directly, is the same as sponsoring Russian tanks and guns. Europe is funnelling billions of euro into Russia which has helped it fund the invasion. Renewables can provide a triple win of lower costs, greater security and zero emissions, while also defunding Putin's regime. Wind energy alone provided 53% of Ireland's electricity last month. EirGrid recently informed an Oireachtas committee that offshore wind alone could power 3.75 million homes by 2030. It is really exciting to think that we could be producing this.

I want to highlight the work that has been done to fast-track this. The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has announced that he will issue maritime area consents to renewable energy deployers with the first consents likely to be issued later this year. Ireland's maritime area is seven times the size of its land mass. We have one of the windiest countries in the world. There is no barrier to us and in fact it is a no-brainer to bring this home. We are the equivalent of Saudi Arabia in the league of wind energy. To harness that wind will be greatly empowering. It has the potential to deliver 30 GW of electricity which is ten times the current needs of the country. We should consider where we were in the mid-1930s and where we will be by the mid-2030s, 100 years later. Not only will we be energy sufficient, but we will be exporting our excess energy. That will solve many issues for us. There will be an enormous export boom for Ireland and we need to expedite this as much as possible.

I wish to highlight something that the motion deals with regarding accommodation. The existing challenge of both building enough housing and retrofitting our homes has now become even more demanding with the additional need to house refugees from Ukraine, which is clearly the right thing to do and is our duty. Our response to this will become a defining moment in the history of our country. It is one that we can be very proud of. The response of the Irish people has been exemplary. More than 20,000 people have pledged accommodation through the Irish Red Cross. The Government has identified State-owned and local authority-owned buildings that could be used as accommodation for the refugees as well as working with religious communities.

This is not an either-or situation. We are ramping up the numbers of apprenticeships so that we will have enough construction workers to do all this. I know the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has been identifying vacant homes that could be used. I note that approximately a quarter of the private accommodation pledges that people have made are for vacant homes. We need to be serious about tackling vacancy and dereliction if we want to properly house and accommodate the refugees. My colleague, Deputy Matthews, has introduced the Vacancy, Dereliction and Regeneration Bill which experts believe would deliver 11,000 homes per year by introducing a vacancy tax to be administered by the Revenue Commissioners.Finally, in respect of the seismic shift, President Biden, quoted a former Member of this House, William Butler Yeats, when he said, "A terrible beauty is born". Everything has changed, changed utterly. There was a similar moment in Ireland, not at the start of the Easter Rising, when some were pelted with mud as they were apprehended. The barbaric nature of the British response changed something in Ireland and there was a landslide general election victory for Sinn Féin. I hope and believe something has changed regarding the value system in the free world. Boris Johnson, of all people, said recently that there can be no going back. We really have to stand our ground and say "Never again". We should have done this in 2014 during the annexation of Crimea, but we did not. Now as a free world we have to be steadfast, not take things for granted, repeatedly reaffirm ourselves, vow never to go back and have zero tolerance for barbaric dictators.