Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise the following and put it with all of the things energy-related this morning. My first query relates to what happened yesterday at a private meeting of the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action as 15 minutes before we went into session we were informed by a letter from the relevant Minister requesting that we wave pre-legislative scrutiny of a Bill for emergency generation. Nobody wants to see the lights go off but this Bill disapplies the Planning Act and environmental impact assessments and 15 minutes is not ample enough time for us to scrutinise all that. The officials who attended the briefing did not give us a commitment that we would have adequate time in the Seanad and the Dáil. I request that we do have time to tease some concerns with the Minister and that the debate will not be guillotined next week. We understand the urgency of this legislation but, if anything, we have learned from the Derrybrien situation that environmental impact assessments are very important, as is the planning system.

The Energy Charter Treaty is an issue that I have raised here on numerous occasions. The treaty has locked us in to fossil fuel infrastructure and will put citizens on the hook for the stranded assets of the fossil-fuel industries. Italy made a decision to leave the treaty in 2016. On numerous occasions I have asked this Government why it persists with trying to reform something that even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, has indicated is clearly not in line and incompatible with the Paris Agreement. The treaty is a barrier to climate action. In the last number of weeks, Poland has walked away from the treaty, the Spanish Government has announced that it will leave the treaty and yesterday the Dutch Government announced that it will leave the treaty. We are supposed to have a Green Minister in the Government yet we cannot get a commitment that Ireland will show true leadership and walk away from what is a dinosaur treaty that will leave citizens in this country on the hook if we try to phase out fossil fuel infrastructure because they will take us to court in the investor-state dispute settlement court system. We know that the public does not get a say in those courts because everything is done behind closed doors by vested interests, and countries are left billions of euro in debt in order to protect the fossil-fuel interests.

I ask the Deputy Leader to arrange either a debate on the Energy Charter Treaty or some discussion on why Ireland persists in remaining in it.