Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Commissioner to the House. We are delighted to have her here today. We do not often get to discuss European affairs and, therefore, this is a really important day for us. I was also delighted she spent so much of her time discussing climate, biodiversity and the emergency and how we are looking back over the past few decades and saying we got it wrong. Europe and Ireland got it wrong in pushing for a particular form of agriculture that actually has done our farmers a disservice when we look at what is being asked now. It is really important to point out that nobody is pointing the finger at farmers. I hear this quite a lot and it boils my blood slightly. People are playing politics with farmers' lives and with the climate. No Green Party member will ever point the finger at a farmer. What we need to do is put in place supports so that people have greener choices that ensure they have a future for their family farms.When it comes to the climate crisis, a great deal will depend on how we invest in Europe, both publicly and privately. Several factors make it such an important time because, in a private sense, we have quite a build-up of money in Irish households, with €150 billion in deposits as of late last year. We have to ensure that does not flow into fossil fuel infrastructure.

In that respect, the EU taxonomy was a missed opportunity. Senator Higgins and I were part of a group of parliamentarians across Europe, with Greens and others from the centre left who pushed hard. In the end it is very disappointing that gas was not included or was certainly seen as sustainable. The Commissioner will be aware that the Court of Justice of the European Union will hear a case that has been filed by NGOs because of the European Commission’s refusal to remove fossil fuel gas from the sustainable finance taxonomy. I ask that she addresses that because we cannot keep steering large private and public investment in a way that is unsustainable and still say that we have a green economy and that the future of Europe is green, clean, and is bringing green jobs because that is the future.

As the Commissioner rightly pointed out, Denmark moved. Ireland has 50 GW of energy generating potential off the west coast and we are only moving now to try to realise that potential. Private and public finance is needed to move us forward.

I recognise that there has been a great deal of positive development such as the corporate sustainability due diligence directive. It is also important that the Commissioner has an opportunity to comment on that.

When I think back, and I have been in the European Union for the whole of my life, we have always had this sense that it is based on shared values and on a sense of protecting democracy. When it came to Brexit, we reaped the rewards of being part of that community. It is also important that we act as leaders now ourselves inside that community. I can see difficulties when it comes to rights going backwards for the LGBTI+ community and women. Access to contraception has reduced in some of EU member states. We must ask what we are doing as a country and as Ireland as part of that community to ensure that we do not go backwards but push forward, and that we are the change within that community.