Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is me being very brief. In that context, I want to signal that I will be bringing forward some amendments. I would also genuinely appreciate it if the Minister of State could look at how we can learn from some of these other pieces and from the mistakes made or the things not foreseen by the NTMA. We have been many years waiting for the review of NAMA to tell us all the things that may or may not have gone wrong with NAMA. We have had situations where the State has put in a lot of money or acquired significant assets and then almost found itself in a situation where Minister after Minister was forced to say “There is nothing we can do about it.”

Again, this is a huge opportunity. I believe we should be investing in our future. The portion assigned to sustainability and climate action is woefully inadequate and I genuinely think that all of it should be. It does not all have to be climate-focused but it should all be climate-proofed at this point. It is one thing to say that 22.5% can be drawn down but that is less than a quarter, which is not good enough. Separate to what the Government may explicitly be investing in areas of climate and nature restoration, there also needs to be climate-proofing of what we have. I wonder how this fits with the new EU guidance in respect of climate-proofing investment. That guidance is itself problematic because, unfortunately, it included gas, which is crazy, but it is still something that merits examination.

I am a little concerned in general. I believe some of the core areas that we need to act on with regard to climate will not be intensely profit-generative. When we are making a big turn and a big shift and we have to reduce emissions quickly, some of the things are not going to make a lot of money but they are going to be of huge value. If we force our climate funding and climate action through a commercial filter, we may end up with actions that can make a business case rather than climate actions that are best at reducing emissions by the date we need to reduce them, which is 2030.