Mal O'Hara (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister, Deputy McGrath. I support this Bill, which I am delighted to see coming before the House. The old adage of fixing the roof while the sun shines comes to mind, but we are not just doing that. We are also putting the money away so that we can buy the tools if there is a leak in a roof that we are unable to fix in the future. People often make the accusation that politics is short-termist or fixed around election cycles and that politicians tend to be profligate when we have a surplus. It is good to see prudence being shown in the approach to both the future Ireland fund and the infrastructure, climate and nature fund.

I am delighted the Minister is here today. I will juxtapose the Minister being here proposing this Bill at this Stage with the decision of another minister for finance on this island to reject a measly £28 million for climate funding projects in the North, which were bids from her ministerial colleagues. This shows two things. The first is the lack of ambition of those ministerial colleagues in bringing forward proposals costing only £28 million. The second is the duplicity of many of the political parties in question because, while they spoke of their support for radical climate and biodiversity action, now that they have their hands on the levers of power, they fail to actually pull them. That juxtaposition is a really important point.

It is imperative we have a framework to adapt and compensate for the challenges facing the State in the coming decades, with reference to this Bill. The Minister spoke about the "four Ds" - decarbonisation, digitalisation, demographics and a fourth that I cannot remember - and the impact they will have, particularly with regard to the climate crisis as well as on the State. I think about the Johari window or Mr. Donald Rumsfeld's statement about "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns". We had a very recent unknown unknown in that we did not expect a global pandemic. That provides a kind of impetus for putting this money aside. It prepares us so that if we have other incidents like that, we will have the resources to deal with them.

We must ensure the ability of the State to adapt to unforeseen challenges and allow ourselves the financial headroom to fund infrastructure and community projects and counteract the worst effects of the climate crisis. We can achieve this with the infrastructure, climate and nature fund. The Bill makes specific reference to the funding of those infrastructure projects through the mechanism. However, there is a challenge we need to think about, namely, how we do that on an island that has two jurisdictions. We know that the climate and biodiversity crises recognise no borders. Issues around energy infrastructure, encouraging people to get out of their private cars and onto public transport and around water and air pollution are all-island challenges. I would like to see something more specific in the Bill to reflect those. It is an opportunity to do so and I hope the Minister takes that suggestion constructively. I will feed that message through my party colleagues as well.

The State cannot ensure a natural thriving environment and diverse ecosystem within its borders without supporting those same ecosystems north of the border. It is impossible to have effective infrastructure which protects our communities from the worst effects of the climate crisis without collaborating with the authorities in the North and taking an all-island approach to security, the environment and biodiversity. The funds created by this Bill present a perfect opportunity to support cross-Border environmental and biodiversity initiatives and all-island infrastructure projects, such as the investment we are exploring in terms of cross-Border rail. That could be transformative for this island.

In previous iterations, projects such as CANN produced excellent results in protecting habitats and species across Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland, with the assistance of EU funding between 2017 and 2022. CANN is one example of such projects. There is a plethora of others and they are worthy of support. I hope we will see that referenced more explicitly in the Bill.

It is important to reiterate that the North has a shameful environmental record.Often the reflex in the North is to point to the bigger island and blame the Brits or blame the Tories. I accept austerity, Tory ideology and more than a decade of cuts will have had an impact, but we have had devolved government in one form or another for 26 years. Therefore, surely there is some responsibility for devolved ministers in respect of their environmental record, as well as the perilous state of finances in the North.

I will give the Minister some headlines for cognisance of the challenge ahead of us. In the North, we are the 12th worst place in the world for biodiversity loss. We emit the highestper capitaemissions of greenhouse gasses across these islands. Zero of our 495 rivers, lakes and coastal plains meet a good standard and we know hard water impacts across the island. We have the largest illegal dump in western Europe at Mobuoy, with no independent investigation into how that happened, despite the assembly supporting a Green Party proposal for a public inquiry. In the city of Belfast, one in 20 deaths is because of air pollution and the toxic air in the city, which is caused by our over-reliance on private cars. Our rates of household recycling are stagnating. We had fewer than 3 km of cycle lanes in Belfast in 2019. Fast forward five years, and we still have fewer than 3 km of segregated cycle lanes. Our soils are polluted with nutrients because the Executive chose a “going for growth” strategy, which was about industrialised farming for export markets rather than supporting and nurturing smaller-scale farms and family holdings. Of course, everyone will be familiar with the disaster at Lough Neagh. However, often what we hear is “Oh gosh, how did this happen?”, when actually we need to examine the policy decisions that were made by recurrent ministers locally that exacerbated the blue and green algae bloom at Lough Neagh.

We also have an aversion to revenue raising. It is 108 days since the return of the assembly in the North and so far it has ruled out all opportunities for revenue raising. This comes off the back of misgovernance, poor governance and lack of accountability. I refer, for example, to the NAMA, Red Sky and RHI scandals of the past decade. We heard the eviscerating evidence from the Covid inquiry last week, when the solicitor of the bereaved families talked about the families' disappointment about how the Executive coped with the crisis of Covid.

The challenge for us is to step up, put the challenge to our colleagues in the North and say they must do better. We must, with the future Ireland fund and the infrastructure, climate and nature fund, take cognisance of historic underfunding in the North for infrastructure and the overspend over four decades on security because of the conflict, and support them in cross-Border initiatives that will be transformative for this island.