Mr. Ciar?n Cuffe:

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach for the invitation this House has offered to MEPs. I will preface my remarks by pointing out that some countries have very close links between their MEPs and national parliaments and in others, the link is not quite as strong. However, I think it reinforces our work and that of the Oireachtas to have an interaction where we can.

Climate change, and climate action, changes everything. It changes in Ireland the way we farm, the way we build, the way we travel and the energy that we consume.If we do this right it can be a good news story in each one of these sectors but if we prevaricate, postpone or kick the can down the road, we will have much tougher choices to make in the years to come.

The takeaway message is that early action will be easier than deferring. This theme came through the state of the Union address to the European Parliament earlier this week by the European Commission President, Ms Ursula von der Leyen, when she said very forcefully that there was a moment during the energy crises of the 1970s and 1980s when, if we had made the change towards renewables, we would not be facing the kind of challenges that we have now. We have seen very clearly from Putin's murderous invasion of Ukraine that our dependency on fossil fuels is costing us dear and that our dependency on Russian gas in particular has led to real problems in homes and industries across the 27 member states of the European Union. It is clear that there is a fork in the road. We can choose the route of finding alternative fossil fuel supplies. Indeed, European Commission officials are out in Qatar and the Middle East, looking for alternative sources of oil and gas. While I accept that we do need supplies in the short term, we should be using this moment to choose the other turn in the road, to take the road towards more renewables, more linked-up electricity grids around Europe and more careful management of our energy supplies. If we do this right, it will be a good news story that will protect consumers and householders from the very high energy prices that we are seeing at the moment.

President von der Leyen saw this three years ago when she announced the European Green Deal. We are all in favour of green deals but it now comes down to the actual legislation, the Fit for 55 package, which is around 20 separate pieces of legislation which, if fully implemented, will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and 2030 by 55% - hence the name Fit for 55. We are all working on elements and aspects of this legislative package and every day of the week we face challenges and push-back from some of our peers in the European Parliament.

The package I am working on comprises two laws. The first one, for which I am the lead negotiator or rapporteur, is the revision of the energy performance of buildings directive. That is a bit of a mouthful but essentially it is about improving the energy performance of our building stock because 40% of the energy in Europe is used in buildings and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the existing building stock. We know where we want to be by 2050. We want every building to have an A energy rating. Of course, there are exceptions for buildings that are part of our patrimony, for protected structures here in Ireland like the building we are in today. We are probably not going to take out those windows and put in treble-glazed PVC windows because we have to respect that. What we need to do is start with those who are living in fuel or energy poverty. We need to bring those homes up to a much higher energy rating and in doing so we will save vulnerable people money on their fuel bills. I have seen it happen. Around the corner from where I live in Stoneybatter, and Senator Fitzpatrick knows this well, the older persons' housing scheme St. Bricin's Park has been brought up to an A energy rating and the transformation in the lives of the people who live there is incredible. We need to roll this out across local authority housing and social housing, while also encouraging those who own their own homes to make that change. I am pleased that here in Ireland the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, is doing a lot of that work.

Within the aforementioned legislation I want to see one-stop-shops all around Europe that give people impartial advice. We are assaulted with advertisements and radio announcements telling us to buy this or that and we need clear, impartial advice. We also need to rack up the minimum energy performance standards so that over the next 28 years, we get everything up to a really good energy standard. This is controversial. Some MEPs and political groupings are saying that the market will sort it out but I do not believe that. I do not believe that people living in wet, damp, hard-to-heat accommodation on the streets of Dublin or Dubrovnik can deal with these challenges alone. They need the European Union to help them and they need the legislation that we are working on within the European Parliament. That is one aspect of my work.

Another one of the 20 Fit for 55 files relates to greening aviation. We are introducing what we call sustainable aviation fuels. It is not easy to green this sector. We are looking at biofuels and we are also looking at synthetic fuels. We want to see higher targets for these synthetic fuels which are made using green hydrogen and carbon dioxide in a process called direct air capture. It is very much in the laboratory and we want to bring that into production. We are producing tens of thousands of litres of this fuel per year and we need to get this up to tens of millions of litres but we need the legislation that provides the direction of travel. If we provide the laws then the market will follow.

At this point, when we face both the climate and biodiversity crises that we have know about for years, and also the crisis of war on European soil and the crisis in energy prices that has resulted from that, there is a temptation to say "Not now, wait until things calm down a bit". However, what we have seen on our screens this summer, with drought all around Europe and record temperatures of 33.1oC here in Dublin and 10oC higher than that in many cities elsewhere in Europe, tells us that the climate is changing. We need to step up to the mark and we need to protect the vulnerable first.

There are challenges in this transition and there will be dead ends and technologies that do not deliver. We have a supply shortage of crucial raw materials, including precious metals, in Europe and we need to step up to the mark in terms of European production of these resources. We need to have European semi-conductors rather than being dependent on Taiwan for these products. The shocks through the system over the last two years have shown that we need to have more goods produced in Europe to meet European demand.

In the past, the road was about building bigger and doing more. Now we know we need to live within our means and this means we have to question a lot of what we do and move onto a greener path. If we focus on both a just transition and climate action, we can deliver a huge amount that will help the most vulnerable in our society.