Senator John McGahon - speech from 9 Dec 2020

Thank you very much, Lasky Herlock. Minister, I think it has become a common courtesy that whenever a Minister comes into this House, the general first couple of things members say is to pay platitudes and to say how great it is to have the Minister in, etc, etc. But I do this genuinely when I do this. I genuinely really enjoy it when you come into this House because of all the Ministers who come in and out, it is so clear that you are so on top of your brief, you are so earnest in what you want to do and your ambition is completely unparalleled for the job that we need. to do and it really is a pleasure to be able to see you come in here without any notes, without any speeches or anything like that and just totally be so on top of your brief. It is impressive all the same. I am also on the Climate Action Committee and as a new parliamentarian, I find it absolutely fascinating the whole concept of prelegative scrutiny. We are in the middle of putting the report together now, going through stuff line by line, having listened to hours and hours and hours and hours of absolute expert testimony and there are people on that committee, you know, within my own party, within other political parties and none, who are so much more experienced than I am and have spent years and years and years working in this sector and know it inside out and to be able to listen and to learn from them is really beneficial to me as a new and younger parliamentarian. My interest personally in the climate action phase of things is in relation to transport and to hear your comments on transport there were very reassuring. One of the points I want to make in terms of electric vehicles and I have said it before to you in this house and I have said it on the order of business here as well is that I have seen in recent times friends of mine and it breaks my heart to see it where they invested in terms of getting electric vehicles and then they turned around and after a year and a half or 18 months they decided to pack it in and to go back to petrol or diesel. And the reason they decided to pack it in was it just wasn't feasible for them and the reason it simply wasn't feasible for them is because the charging infrastructure isn't properly there. So like what we're doing at the minute when we look at it and I just have a list here of some of the some of the financial investments of it, you know, you're talking up to 2500 for new plug-in hybrids, you're talking about grants for installing charges at home, you're talking about VRT relief. So we're providing loads and loads of financial incentives and that's great and it's a great way to encourage people to do it and people see all these financial investments and say, okay, I'm going to go and buy an electric vehicle, let's go. And then all of a sudden they realise they're going to struggle to get from Dublin to Cork or Dublin to Belfast because when they get to a part where the charging points are, the charging points are faulty, they get there to it and someone's sitting there parked in it while they're inside having their lunch, you know, whatever. So how do we change that? We change that by having such a huge campaign and we're doing it with local authorities and the government are trying to do it, a huge campaign towards increasing more charges and putting them right around the country. I would love to see and what I think we are trying to do it is in any new planning permission for any new housing developments, for example, that part of the planning permission is you must have electric vehicle charging points and new estates, that type of thing. I think once we really encourage, reassure people, for want of a better word, that the concept of battery anxiety will be a thing of the past, they will buy into it. And we've listened to other members around here today to say that, like I have no doubt that Irish society, people are, like the green agenda has just exploded in the last 18 months. And people are so excited about it and want to take part in it, but it needs to be made, as Victor Boyhan said earlier, as easy as possible for them. And the way we make that as easy as possible for them is to make it as easy as you can to get from A to B. And the other thing I want to touch on in my last couple of minutes is in relation to what Senator Byrne mentioned there. And it's something, again, I've raised on the order of business and I hope to get a commencement matter on it soon, is in relation to the smokey fuel ban. Like it's absolutely ludicrous that we have 10 towns or whatever more it is, and Dundalk, my hometown is one of them, that have a smokey fuel ban. And you can still buy smokey fuels in those towns. It's virtually impossible for local authorities to actually enforce it as well. You know, what are you doing? You're maybe sending a little warden around to enforce the banning of smokey fuels. So what we need to do is have a total outright ban on it right across the country. And that would provide huge opportunity to actually hit those 7% targets that we set ourselves in the programme for Government. And CPL fuels have met with many members of this House in recent weeks about it. And I was reading this morning in preparation for this debate a white paper that they prepared. And just to go off it for a second to show the first steps towards achieving the targets of 7% would be the banning from sale of smokey coal. And this has to be the nationwide ban. Because significant CO2 savings can be achieved if the solid fuel mix in Ireland moves to smokeless as a first step. So we're talking about a 0.9% reduction in total residential emissions. Ovid's contain a 30% biomass. That's a 5.9% reduction in total residential emissions. Or Ovid's containing a 50% biomass. That's a 9.3% reduction in total residential emissions. And in 2019 the State retrofitted 1,000 homes. And it's acknowledged that 35,000 homes would need to be retrofitted to have a real dent and impact on our CO2 emissions at a significant level. And a viable alternative to achieving these emissions reductions in the residential sector at no cost to the State is mandating a switch to low carbon solid fuels and homes. Followed by this long waited smoky coal ban. The ambition that we have in this government and it's no short reason as it's a result of you and your colleagues sitting at the cabinet table. And my green colleagues being part of the government as well which is so welcomed. It's because of the ambition that you are dragging us along with you for points that you have been advocated for decades. Let's be ambitious about it. Let's set out and achieve everything you have outlined in your opening statement today. We can absolutely do it. Society are bought in to do it. But we have to make it as easy and as simple as possible. Thank you.