Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. In considering this, I have to join with others in saying that given the length of time the planning framework will cover and how important it will be as a frame for all of the policy discussions and issues we will raise over the next few years, I regret that we have not had a proper process going through committees with an opportunity to engage and consider the collective wisdom we may be able to draw from Oireachtas Members of all parties and expert witnesses. There have been consultations, but we should take more time to consider the plan.

I want to look to a few of the key points, some of which have been addressed by others. I refer to social and affordable housing. There is concern about mixed development in the context of the LDA and others. It is not clear what that will mean. Will it involve profit-maximising development or social and affordable housing, and to what extent? We know from the recent articles we have seen there are those who bemoan that there may be a gap in the luxury housing market in terms of a recession. The actual gap is about the houses that people can afford to live in.

We need social housing that allows those families who cannot afford to purchase a house or be secure in the unstable rental environment in Ireland to have foundations on which their families can build and grow and homes from which their children can go to school. We need to allow them to plan their lives. Our greatest social substructure is social housing that ensures every family can have a proper start in life. I regret that social and affordable housing has not been identified more clearly in the ambition of the targets. Others have mentioned that the plan falls short of what was recommended by the Housing Commission. There are disjoins.I acknowledge that this is not just about housing but one piece that was missing from Housing for All was the failure to acknowledge the positive reality, from my perspective, of migration and to acknowledge that it is part of the population change we have. At the time, Housing for All simply left out whole sections of people who need to be housed but were not featured within the plan and strategy. Then, when we had people coming through, it was treated as a emergency, rather than an actual reality of modern states. Migration is a reality and should be planned for just like other housing need and should be built into the picture, rather than being treated as an emergency at the fringes. That was missing from Housing for All, even at the time when we knew that Ireland had committed, rightly, to give support to those from Ukraine who were coming through. This needs to be planned for to ensure that our housing capacity is genuinely there in terms of where our population will be.

Another piece in terms of housing that notably is not coming through, despite being identified again and again as probably one of the single, earliest things we could do, is to really tackle vacancy and dereliction. There are not strong measures within this around tackling the extraordinarily high levels of vacancy and dereliction. I acknowledge there is reference to brownfield sites and existing footprints but these are very indirect. However, there are no robust measures that will tackle the issue of dereliction and the extraordinarily large amount of housing left vacant. Sometimes properties are left vacant as part of investment portfolios and not used as residences. When we talk about vacancy and dereliction, it is not just about the boarded-up houses in our towns and villages, it is also about having apartment blocks with apartments empty, because they simply are driving up the price.

There are some positive measures. I am glad the Minister of State has joined us because of his remit in terms of biodiversity. There is some hopeful language in relation to biodiversity in this. I was glad to see that the SDGs are mentioned in national policy objective 14 and biodiversity in national policy objective 88. These are quite strong references to biodiversity. This will be one where I will look to the Minister of State specifically, because it will be about how strongly the Minister of State interprets his powers in this regard and how he applies them. When the document says that this should be done in relation to biodiversity, it is important that it is not with regard to biodiversity at the fringes, but that there is an assertion of biodiversity sustainability being in the core design of the steps that are taken in the core projects. It should be central to projects rather than being at the fringes of projects. That will be crucial, as it cannot be the scatter of seeds at the end. The word "sustainable" is used constantly in the document. When we talk about "sustainable" it is important that we are clear that this interpretation should be a "sustainable" that matches the sustainable development goals. It should not just be "sustainable" as in "you can keep doing it", but sustainable in the more meaningful sense.

These are areas where a robust interpretation will determine if those paragraphs and policy protections actually mean something. There are areas where I am concerned about contradictions. For example, national policy objective 32 talks about rural areas and investing in ICT and in climate services. I am hoping that should read, "ICT related". If that is to do with data centres then that is a problem because it is in total contrast to our climate goals. It is important when we see that language to know exactly what it means. One of the things not being acknowledged or properly addressed is the fact of very large energy consumers and what that does to our planning and to our energy piece. This is where I want to come to. I had a few other points but I will put them aside because I want to use my last two minutes to speak in support of Senator Cosgrove's amendment. The issue is around demand and we have to be honest about this issue. There is a driving up of demand when we look to having data centres and other large energy users that may use up to 30% of the electricity in the State. We constantly hear about the lights going out in hospitals but we do not hear about the risks posed by data centres and other large users. These are commercial services that in many cases, all they produce are ads that refresh every millisecond. They are vampires on our energy system and they are jeopardising the country's energy security, in the long term. Let us be real and acknowledge that we are on a planet which has a limited period of time and a limited amount of space before it becomes so hot that people start dying in their hundreds of thousands, if not millions. That is where we are at. We need to be real and acknowledge that climate change is real, as are its impacts and costs. It will be hitting us if we contribute to it. Liquefied natural gas, LNG, has an 80% higher impact, that is, the impact comes sooner and is quicker. The reality is that most LNG will be gas that is fracked in the United States. That is where it is largely produced and the United States has left the Paris Agreement. We should not be setting up infrastructure that requires us to take one of the dirtiest fossil fuels in the world from a place that is not even measuring it or limiting it or making any effort to ensure that the way it is extracted does not contribute to the escalation of climate change. It makes us complicit in that and it is dangerous. I spoke about the disasters in the past in Bantry. There we saw deaths from the Whiddy Island disaster and others. We are talking about a very dangerous fuel, which as has been described, requires venting and all kinds of processes that will be taking place in Ireland. There is a reason we banned fracking in Ireland but now we are looking at bringing that in at a time when it will take a long time to be created anyway. It will compete directly with and undermine renewables. For example, British Petroleum has now said that it will abandon renewables and go back to focusing on fossil fuels because of this new wave of cheerleading on fossil fuels. If we choose renewables, we must choose renewables. I support the amendment. I think it is a responsible one and I hope that the Government would have regard to it in their policies.