Eamon Ryan
Ceist:5. Deputy Eamon Ryan asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet sub-committee on infrastructure, environment and climate action last met; and when the next meeting is to take place. [31825/16]
Amharc ar fhreagraWednesday, 26 October 2016
Ceisteanna (5, 6)
Gerry Adams
Ceist:6. Deputy Gerry Adams asked the Taoiseach the number of meetings of the Cabinet committee on infrastructure, environment and climate action that have been held in 2016. [32052/16]
Amharc ar fhreagraFreagraí ó Béal (7 píosaí cainte)
I propose to take Questions Nos. 5 and 6 together.
The Cabinet sub-committee on infrastructure, environment and climate action was reconstituted in June and held its first meeting in July. It met again yesterday, 25 October.
This committee plays a central role in ensuring a whole-of-Government approach to addressing climate change and the development of critical infrastructure.
I thank the Taoiseach for accepting a delegation of the environmental movement yesterday - Trócaire, Environmental Pillar, the Jesuits, Friends of the Earth and the Climate Gathering - and allowing it to make a presentation last night on the national dialogue on climate change. I hope I am not speaking out of class here, but the Taoiseach's comments in that meeting in which he recognised that we need to create a national movement were exactly right. If we are to achieve the scale of change to which we are due to sign up later this week - I hope, on Thursday - regarding the Paris Agreement, the scale of the change we need to make is so immense that we really need first and foremost to get our people to understand and get behind it. We need to do this as set out in the partnership document for Government by engaging in a completely different way with the people by putting the question to them as to how they can help and get involved.
Further to that meeting last night, there was one item that was not discussed, which I want to have the chance to reiterate. It is very important, and I would be interested to hear the Taoiseach's views on it. I refer to the carrying out of what is set out in the programme for Government document when it states that part of this dialogue must involve the media not just reporting on the events, but also using new, innovative, online and other creative techniques to be part of the debate so that they too start to get a different and better understanding as to how the story we will tell to create this national movement for action on climate change will take place. I am interested to hear the Taoiseach's views as to whether he thinks it makes sense to engage not just as a reporter, but also as a participant in a way, in the variety of different dialogues I believe need to take place as part of a national climate dialogue.
I think the understanding coming from the environmental movement that presented last night is that it needs a special steering group at the centre of government, not just one involving Government, but also possibly the NESC secretariat, the climate expert group and the people involved in the national planning framework and in the review of the capital plan. Does the Taoiseach agree that such an approach, which does not rely on just one Department that may not have the resources either in budget or staff terms to manage the scale of the dialogue we need to take place, is needed? I am interested to hear his thoughts, further to the presentations made last night, as to how such an organisational structure needs to be got right first, with a view to living out - which is a good articulation in the programme for a partnership Government - how a different sort of national conversation needs to take place on these sorts of critical long-term strategic issues for the State.
Before last Christmas, the UN panel of climate change experts concluded that humankind is to blame for global warming and warned that the planet will see increasingly extreme weather as events unfold, unless governments take strong action. In its report the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the world is ill-prepared for the risks arising from a changing climate. It also warned that many states could expect more frequent storms and flooding. That certainly has been the experience here. We are all very familiar with what happened particularly in the Shannon river catchment area, where homes were totally destroyed by floodwaters. The same thing happened in my constituency, in Louth, particularly in Dundalk. I have maintained contact with the families involved since, and they face a winter filled with dread. They are angry, they are concerned and they tell me that flood defences have not been constructed and that their homes and businesses have no more protection now than they had last year. I therefore ask the Taoiseach to outline the Government's proposal for this coming winter and winter 2017 and whether local authorities have been allocated additional interim funding to undertake preventative work until the CFRAM flood defences are complete. Many of these will not be complete - in fact, to my knowledge, very few of them will be complete - before mid-summer of next year.
This week the world entered a new era of climate change reality. We are told that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a symbolic threshold of 400 parts per million across the globe. In this context it is imperative that the Paris Agreement, which commits countries to keeping temperature rises to well below 2° Celsius, enter into force.
The Minister, Deputy Naughten, has said he wants to secure Dáil ratification of the Paris Agreement before the next UN global summit on climate change to be held in November. How confident is the Taoiseach that can be achieved? Is the Government committed to the full implementation of the Paris Agreement?
It is. An additional €5.14 billion was announced in the summer economic statement to deal with transport, housing, broadband, health, education and flood defences. Some €4.6 billion will be allocated for capital expenditure next year.
Deputy Adams should have a conversation with the Minister of State, Deputy Canney. He is dealing extensively with the progress being made in respect of flood relief works and flood prevention across the entire country. As the Deputy will be aware, the previous Government put in place the CFRAM study and has allocated a serious amount of money in coming years to deal with Cork, Galway and many other places where flooding has occurred or is likely to occur.
We are also looking at a scheme to deal with the relocation of people from a small number of houses that have been flooded for the past number of years and where it is no longer possible to live. I believe this applied in the 1980s where a number of houses in south Galway were flooded badly because turloughs became blocked or whatever. If the Deputy engages with the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, he can give an update on the progress in respect of each of those.
I again thank Deputy Eamon Ryan for the contributions by the different members of the delegation who appeared before the Cabinet sub-committee yesterday. I found their contributions succinct, accurate, well delivered and very thoughtful. After the delegation left we discussed the question of the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment dealing with his mitigation programme which he will launch reasonably soon. We also looked at the question the Deputy raised at the meeting in regard to having a structure to draw in agencies, organisations and individuals to deal with this. One system is the Cabinet sub-committee, itself, but I do not think I would have the opportunity to be available at all times to bring those different groups and organisations together. I will engage with the Minister, Deputy Naughten, to see what he is proposing. Perhaps the Cabinet sub-committee could be a conduit to assist in that work.
In respect of media coverage, the Deputy will be aware of allegations of the Government using the media as a tool for itself in promoting its own cause. There is a delicate balance in having interest from media in explaining to people what they can do in their communities, organisations and homes to build that national understanding the Deputy rightly spoke of. When people involve themselves in some of these activities, small as they may be, they feel they are playing an important part in what is now a global phenomenon.
Clearly, the extent of the diminution of the Arctic ice cap this year is further evidence of climate change on the move. One of the boats that sailed through the Northwest Passage did so in three months. Ten years ago it took the same boat two years to get through; so the change is remarkable.
This is obviously an issue for us. We have got a reasonably good deal from Commissioner Cañete. The challenges here between 2020 and 2030 will be exceptional even given the credits we will be allocated on various issues. We need to return to the matter on a pretty constant basis.
I assure the Deputies that the Ministers and their officials are working really well and strongly from a technical point of view in dealing with Brussels. We cannot get approval for our deal unless we get consent from others and that will not be easy.
The scale of the change we need to make is phenomenal. It was clear from the presentation given to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment yesterday that we are nowhere near doing what we need to do. We will not meet any of our renewables targets. We will be one of only two countries in Europe to fail to meet emissions reduction targets; we are heading in the other direction. There was an acknowledgement at yesterday's committee meeting that we are not even doing the additional measures that would slightly reduce that gap. I asked the officials at the meeting to outline the scale of those additional measures. It would be something like 50,000 additional electric vehicles in the next few years at a time when the existing owners of electric vehicles will say they cannot find a working plug-in station.
When it comes to flood prevention, the scale of change we need to make involves taking hundreds of thousands of acres of Coillte forest land and turning it into a flood protection zone and a carbon sink rather than a lumber forest development, which is viable, or changing completely not just all these big and very expensive engineering measures we are considering along the Shannon and other rivers, but actually considering soft land use measures such as using our bogs in a completely different way, which would also have the advantage of carbon storage.
To win over the people for the scale of the change I believe is necessary if we are serious about implementing the Paris Agreement, we cannot use the old consultation way of coming with top-down solutions. We need to flip it and ask people for help and try to engender the understanding that I hold to be central and true that it is a better economic model when we work with nature. When we go in this low carbon direction, it is the best possible future for our country.
I mentioned the media's involvement because it was referred to in the Government's documents on the nature of this new engagement and consultation process. I cite the example of the commemoration of the centenary of the foundation of the State in 1916 where media partners played a part, not just as being involved as reporters, but also in helping events happen and bringing new online techniques to allow people to engage. As we said last night, this has to be a very big creative process.
It also needs to involve the Departments of Transport, Tourism and Sport, Agriculture, Food and the Marine and others as well as the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment. I agree that one might think that the Cabinet sub-committee is an obvious place. However, I suggest that it might be a sub-committee to that committee. If the process is important in how people are engaged, it has to start with some sort of steering group that also brings in some outside people who would not typically be at a Cabinet sub-committee. By all means it can report to that Cabinet sub-committee, but it should be set up as a separate entity to do that. It should be given an adequate budget and real freedom to be innovative and creative to win our people over to the sense that we will have a better future with lower carbon.
Of course, I will communicate with the Minister of State, Deputy Canney. However, I met the people in Cloonlara, County Clare, last year and that village does not have defences in place. Teachta Quinlivan just reminded me that the banks of the Shannon in Limerick city got two rows of breeze blocks. Homes in Mount Hamilton in Dundalk were destroyed. I met representatives of the local authority this week and was advised that no defences will be put in place this year. The residents are living in dread, as are people living along the Flurry River in Ballymascanlon. The Taoiseach was there and saw the damage and the corrosive, awful debilitating stress caused by the floods.
I ask the Taoiseach to confirm if local authorities have been allocated additional interim funding to undertake preventative work until CFRAM flood defences are complete, which will not happen before impending flooding this year.
I will consider Deputy Eamon Ryan's suggestion that a sub-committee might play a part. We have evidence, obviously, of people wanting to participate in improving the environmental situation here, farmers with carbon footprint in respect of dairy or beef or whatever. It is a case of people being well informed about the small measures they can take to help and of the changes communities and public buildings can make in terms of insulation, solar panels, wind energy, where appropriate, and so on.
Ireland really had four conditions.
The first condition was that our annual compliance targets from 2021 to 2030 be determined using a realistic starting point which would reflect the reality of the end point in 2020, and not based on the assumption that we have reached our minus 20% target. The second condition was an express recognition of our constrained investment capacity over a number of years. Given the state of the economy because of the collapse, it was not possible for Ireland to invest in the way that it should. That included the time that the troika was here and all of that. That meant that we could not meet our 2020 targets. The third condition was an express recognition of the low-mitigation potential of agriculture, which constitutes 40% of Ireland's non-emissions trading system emissions. We have a profile that is very similar to New Zealand's. Very few other countries have that kind of profile. Another condition is to be allowed to use the net afforestation for land use, land-use change, and forestry, LULUCF credits, which constitutes about 10% of annual emissions. It is important to note that that estimate for our forestation was based on the rules of directive 529, which apply up to 2020. These are areas that we are going to have to work very hard on to reach where we want to be between 2021 and 2030. We will have some saving grace starting off if we can start in 2021 instead of 2020.
Deputy Adams referred to flooding in particular locations around the country. Clearly these are physical requirement to be dealt with to try to hold back the force of nature when it happens. As the Deputy knows, when the Corrib, the Lee or the Shannon floods, it is virtually impossible to deal with it unless long-term preparations are made. They have proven to be a success in Clonmel, down in Fermoy and other locations, where despite very heavy rains and strong floods, the defences put in place have succeeded. These are things that have to be analysed. The engineering has to be gotten right. We have to have the resources to go and provide for the defences. Whether it is in small villages or towns, it applies right across the country. Last year, we set up a specific organisation dealing with the Shannon, which is now at chief executive level rather than just participation level. The Minister of State, Deputy Canney, met with that group again recently. It has made significant headway on looking at what might be done given the very low level of descent of the Shannon over a very long distance, which is the principal cause of lateral flooding when lakes back up and the capacity is not there to take the water away in the way that people might imagine. These are points that are the focus of the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, at the moment. I suggest that Deputy Adams might have a conversation with him.
Question No. 7 replied to with Written Answers.