Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)

The Taoiseach is quoted as stating:

I don’t think we can mitigate for climate change ... if we get into a position where we are going to challenge every single thing, saying it is against the climate, we are going to divide society fairly fast.

The Taoiseach spoke about progressiveness. He did not mention climate earlier, but I look forward to him speaking more on it. He stated previously that if this generation does not step up, future generations will not forgive us. They will not forgive us. Right now, people across the world will not forgive us. Not only will Ireland face €26 billion in fines, but, as we know, it is projected that by 2050 there are going to be 1.2 billion people displaced around the world due to climate change and related disasters. Some 53% of all displacements in 2022 were driven by disasters. Of those, 98% were to do with climate change. This is literally the world burning.

The comments to which I refer were made during a discussion about the competitiveness and simplification agenda, which is being pushed in Europe, and which I am disturbed to see Ireland allowing for and supporting. There were references to discussions with Keir Starmer and others and about not tying ourselves in knots. Let us be clear - some of the regulations that people are trying to remove, and successfully removing at European level, are environmental and human rights regulations and things like due diligence. That is the world we create if we pander to deregulation. There have been conversations about deregulation in the tech sector at a time when we are hearing about cyber threats and hybrid threats and how concerned we have to be about them. Right now, however, we know there is a huge push from the tech sector for the deregulation of technology. What has driven some of the attacks we have seen on democracy has been a failure to regulate the tech sector.

On weapons, Europe is proposing €800 billion in loans. Some €150 billion of those loans relate to Security Action for Europe. To be clear, these loans can be used to buy battle-tested weapons from Israel and cluster bombs. Ireland negotiated the ban on cluster bombs. A total of €16 billion has been given to Hungary, which has authoritarian tendencies in its government. I ask and implore that we have leadership. Let us have leadership on Palestine, on the environment and climate and on peace.