Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 10 March 2021
38. Deputy Jennifer Whitmore asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications the status of the new climate action and low carbon development (amendment) Bill 2020; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13252/21]
View answerIt reflects the importance of the Bill in question that it is also the subject of my priority question. I would also like to ask the Minister for an update on the Bill. To take it a bit further, what are the actual delays with it? The Minister has said that considerable work has gone into it. When the committee first received the document, the Minister hoped for a two week pre-legislative scrutiny period which, to be honest, would have amounted to very little. Instead, we brought in a series of experts who all said the same thing on the weaknesses of the Bill. We put a lot of work into it. Will the Minister provide an update?
I have a written response but because it is very similar to that given to Deputy O'Rourke, I might skip it and Deputy Whitmore can read it because it does answer her question directly. To come back to the process, because there was a certain time urgency I thought the pre-legislative scrutiny process would be short and then we would probably spend longer on Committee and Report Stages.
However, when the Oireachtas committee came back with its suggested approach, I was happy to agree to that much more extensive consultation. In my experience of the last three to four years, what has worked in climate politics in this country, if I could put it that way, has been the good co-operation between Government Departments and the joint Oireachtas committee. In particular, the Joint Committee on Climate Action in the last Dáil, and again in this one, has shown a cross-party approach that really benefits us. It is in a similar respect that we have taken time to review and consider the amendments. While I cannot remember the exact number of amendments, perhaps 90 or so, that was not a short process in terms of considering not just the amendments but the evidence we heard at the joint Oireachtas committee, including valid criticism, which we accept, that we need to listen and try to improve things. We will end up with a vastly improved draft Bill. While the time it has taken has been somewhat frustrating, I think it has been time well spent and we will see that in the Bill as it emerges.
It has been 83 days since the committee handed back the recommendations so I hope the time the Minister has taken has been to incorporate those recommendations, not to get rid of them. The frustrating thing for me is the sense of urgency with this. There was a huge sense of urgency in getting this Bill up and running. I do not know if the Minister can picture that image by the Spanish sculptor of a group of politicians sitting around discussing climate change and how we deal with it, as the water rises above their heads. To me, that is what it feels like. Our biggest risk, and the most problematic issue here, is our ability and the ability of a bureaucratic system to deal with things quickly.
One of the previous questions I had hoped to ask the Minister this evening, although I did not get an opportunity to do so, was in regard to CETA and its implications for any legislation. Does the Minister foresee any issues in regard to CETA once this Bill is passed into law in terms of being able to bring in the policies we need to see brought in to address climate change?
On the last question, I do not. There is a whole range of other international treaties that will affect climate change. The energy charter treaty is a very specific energy treaty that has all sorts of mixed implications on climate, some pro and some of which would give rise to concerns, so it is very complicated. The recent Brexit agreement is going to affect how we approach climate and there is a whole range of new treaties coming. The issue of trade and climate is critical and a variety of different trade agreements and other structures will affect that. I have not had any sense that CETA will have a direct impact but we will continue to review that. I know various Oireachtas committees are looking at it.
I want to make one point in regard to the Deputy's comment on speed of delivery and political action. With regard to the collaborative approach I mentioned, in this country in the last three years, Deputy Pringle's Bill delivered an end to investing in fossil fuels, a similar Bill from Fine Gael in the last Dáil delivered an end to fracking on our part of the island and Deputy Bríd Smith's Bill on ending oil and gas exploration - we had a similar one - is about to bear fruit when, on Committee Stage of the climate Bill, we will introduce the provisions to stop oil and gas exploration. We are effectively stopping the use of coal and we have stopped the use of industrial peat extraction. If anyone had said to me four years ago that we would stop State investment in fossil fuels, stop fracking, stop the use of coal and stop peat extraction, I would have said that to do that in such a time period was a remarkable achievement. We should collectively recognise that politics sometimes does deliver and that in the sort of actions that have been made in the last three to four years, we have achieved significant change.
For a lot of what we are trying to get into place, infrastructural changes will be required and there are lead-in times for that. The Government has a target of 2030 as the next major step. We had the transport discussions yesterday with the climate committee. It came as a surprise to me that when the National Transport Authority is putting in applications for Government funding or putting forward its proposals for different programmes, they are not assessed as to what the emissions results will be or what reductions will come out of those projects. The climate Bill will be very welcome once we have it in legislation, so long as the recommendations are incorporated, but there is a whole jigsaw that we need to get done. I know many wind farm operators want to know when the renewable electricity support scheme, RESS, option will happen and what the terms and conditions of that are. There are timelines and milestones that we need to speed up, if possible, to ensure we get this done.
I agree. While the Deputy was in the Joint Committee on Climate Action yesterday, I was answering questions at the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications, where I made the case that we will need to have a radical system change in transport. What we have done with switching to electric vehicles or switching to biofuels will deliver certain elements, but it will not deliver the enhanced ambition we are now setting ourselves. That will only come with really significant reductions in the demand for travel and the volume of travel, and also with radical changes in modal share shift. That is why I keep coming back to the benefits of a collaborative political approach around climate. As the Deputy and I know, that then comes around to difficult decisions about allocation of road space and allocations of resources at a local authority as well as a central government level in terms of how we make it safer for active travel, and how we really promote public transport by allocating road space and investment priorities. The critical need for time urgency is that the national development plan review will be done at the same time as the new climate action plan is developed, which is absolutely right because it has to be climate-proofed. That is what we will do.
