Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for attending and outlining the position on the annual emissions statement. It is worth pointing out that we are doing so at a stage when, as reported last week, one third of the population is in energy poverty. It is unfortunate that we are dealing with the figures from 2019 and not the present-day ones because it is difficult to have a look at an honest, realistic benchmark. I say that because the Government came into power in 2020. It has made significant progress from a green perspective in putting climate change on the agenda and trying to mainstream it across all Departments. From that perspective, the Minister of State and his party should be complimented.

It is quite ironic that we see today in The Irish Timesthat some of the Minister of State's partners in government, including the Tánaiste and Chief Whip, have forwarded emails they received from drivers about the Phoenix Park, which is one of the great green spaces in our city. The drivers said their cars were cutting out because they could not possibly drive at 30 km/h. I believe this is absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes I find that while some of the Green Party members of the Government have the best of ideas and intentions, they can be undermined by their Government partners, having regard to the ridiculous notions I have mentioned.

I want to focus on energy poverty and who is in energy poverty.While the Government has done a lot to make grants available for people to retrofit their homes, there needs to be a focus on those who are at the lower end of the income scale and who are mainly living in rental accommodation through the HAP system or in social housing or AHB-supported housing. There needs to be a renewed focus put on that. I have concerns around retrofitting and I am concerned that some landlords will use Government grants to retrofit their homes, then claim substantial renovations have been made and make a move to either raise the rent or evict people from their rental accommodation. I would like to see a situation where Government explicitly outlaws anybody who has used Government-funded grants to upgrade their homes for energy reasons from raising the rent or evicting vulnerable tenants. We are seeing a greater number of people enter homelessness from the private rental sector, which is a concern of mine.

Another thing I want to focus on in the area of housing is the reuse of building material. The Minister of State was here last week when we discussed the circular economy and Senator Boylan and I both focused on the embodied carbon that is already in existing buildings. We see planning applications come up and come through and an awful lot of the time they are for the knocking or destruction of buildings that have embodied carbon already. The Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Noonan, was here to discuss the Planning and Development (Built Heritage Protection) Bill 2022. We see situations where developers or owners will sometimes allow buildings of significant heritage value to fall into disrepair so they can get the excuse to be able to knock them. That has heritage and housing implications but it also has significant climate implications because the emissions figures from the construction industry from building new housing are significant. We need to get used to reusing and reimagining buildings and to reimagining purpose within our cities with what already exists there to try to lessen the climate and emissions target from providing housing for our population.

I also want to echo some of the comments others have made on wind energy. We have not fully exploited the potential Ireland has. A lot of it is focused on the eastern seaboard because the technology has not developed to fully exploit the potential of the Atlantic for wind energy but we can also look at countries similar to ourselves, such as Scotland, which has done much better in meeting its energy needs from wind energy and in exporting it. With that in mind, I am glad to see energy and EirGrid connections to France coming, for example, so that we can potentially export the energy we have. We have a long way to go but it is one of the focuses we have to have in Ireland's potentially leading role in making Europe energy secure. The southern side of Europe can become energy secure with solar energy and the northern side of Europe can become energy secure with wind energy.

I notice that the statements are heavy on emissions from transport. The Minister of State knows that the cost of transport congestion is not just emissions but that it is also things like congestion. Sometimes people think that converting to 1 million electric cars is somehow a panacea and that they are single-handedly saving the environment by themselves because they drive a big and expensive electric car that probably took more carbon to produce and that uses more public space than otherwise. I know that the Minister for Transport has been working on improving our cycle infrastructure within our towns and cities and I would also like us to work on that in our rural areas. I would like us to have protected cycle infrastructure and we simply do not have that in Dublin. I cycle most days and it is extremely dangerous. What I have noticed in recent years is that the cars that are driving alongside me might be electric but they are silent, much bigger, take up more road space and think they are entitled to do so. We have to have a look at the size of cars. Even if we have to focus on what carbon they take to make in terms of charging them for congestion, that is another area we should look at.