Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 2 concerns an issue that has arisen in another context. My suggestion is to delete “commercial” and substitute “commercially, socially and environmentally sustainable”. I will give the context. Currently, the agency invests the assets on a commercial basis and seeks the optimal financial return. However, there can be a narrowness sometimes with regard to how "commercial" is interpreted. One place we have seen it is with regard to, for example, the mandate of Coillte.

I have read the mandate for nature legislation, which, again, relates partly to the Minister's Department. I am engaging with the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, but it is an area that I believe is relevant in terms of the Minister's Department as well. At the moment, for example, "commercial" has been interpreted with regard to Coillte in such a narrow way that in the shareholder letter the Government wrote to Coillte, it literally said the priority has to be cash generative. It is almost talking to the shortest term piece of what is going to give us the most money in the shortest time, and not just that, it is what is going to give us the quickest return and what is going to generate cash internally rather than the value for money. When we look at public procurement and all these other areas, which we have engaged on in the past, value for money is actually a much wider thing that is not always about cash and not always solely about the commercial.

Similarly for the State, as I said, this is about the future Ireland fund and infrastructure, climate and nature fund. In order to be getting genuine value for the State from this public money, we should be looking for it to be invested in ways that are both commercially, socially and environmentally sustainable so that, for example, we do not see investment in areas where there may be a commercial return but it may be creating actual costs for the State from a social or environmental perspective. In the case of Coillte, the real question has to be about the very small profit that Coillte makes and that goes back to the State as a shareholder return, which it is told to prioritise in the shareholder letter, versus the extraordinary avoidance we could have of massive EU fines for failing to meet our climate targets if, for example, we were making better use of that 7% of land that is controlled by Coillte. There is some need for a bigger picture here to say that absolutely, have a commercial mandate in what we are investing, but if we are making a choice between one commercial choice and another commercial choice, make the choice that is also going to deliver for us in terms of environmental and social sustainability, whereas if we prioritise and name solely the commercial element, there is a danger that we are making choices within that commercial bubble, which, as I said, has that very narrow interpretation by the Government in some if its communications as cash generative. It is a very narrow version of "commercial" that is at odds with what is actually going to deliver. We want to see investment in infrastructure, climate and nature in a way that is not just going to deliver profits that might be channelled into fixing problems but that is going to help us avoid problems. That is the thing with climate and nature in particular. In some of the areas in which we need to spend money, it is preventative spending. We are spending money so as to avoid massive out-of-control costs in the future. It is the usual line that many people might want to invest in electric vehicles because there may be profits to be made, but if they want to invest in a flood barrier to keep a sewage plant working, there is no money to be made. All it does is prevent future public cost. There is a piece here around thinking more holistically. I worry that sometimes when we put the commercial frame in to legislation, no matter how many lovely adjectives are in the title of the fund, it can become a very narrow discussion and a very narrow picture. There can be a failure to actually make the most of every instrument we have, particularly when it comes to climate and nature right now. We need every instrument we have to be as effective as it can be in every dimension of effectiveness it can deliver, again, as I said, so that the choices and the money go through a triple check as we spend this money. Is it going to be sustainable? Is it going to deliver for us socially and environmentally as well as commercially? That is what I am looking for. It is a small change, but it is based on looking to maybe some of the failure to make the most of the tools we have in terms of bodies such as Coillte in the past.