I want to respond to a couple of points made by Deputy Fleming. Alarm bells ring for me when the explanation for why we cannot do pre-legislative scrutiny is because we cannot do it efficiently and it might take us six months, when we are talking about a Bill that aims to make processes efficient. I did pre-legislative scrutiny in the previous Dáil when it needed to be done quickly on the housing committee and it was done in a matter of a couple of weeks. We were able to do it quickly and efficiently. The Government is saying to us that we will have an efficient process around critical infrastructure but we cannot even manage the pre-legislative scrutiny efficiently. It does not really speak to confidence in the Government's ability. I do not buy that, to be frank. Deputy Fleming said that the designations the Minister makes will be laid before the House and there will be an opportunity to debate them in the House. That is technically correct but it is a bit of stretch because to be able to debate in the House, we have 21 days to get a motion in. Most Opposition parties and groups may not have any Private Members' time in those 21 days and if we did, as the Minister knows well, we have hundreds of competing strong demands for that one time slot. To get a slot to actually debate any of these designations in the Dáil, while technically possible, will be extremely difficult to exercise. Before I get into the detail of the Bill, I will make a point about critical infrastructure. It is not just about process being more efficient. While that is important, it is also about the overall strategic priorities of the Government. The Government's overall strategic priorities when it comes to critical infrastructure have been wrong. Tá na tosaíochtaí míchearta ag an Rialtas. I will give an example. If you fly into any airport, you get a good sense of the priorities in that country or city. If you fly into Vienna, you see a lot of affordable housing. If you fly into London at night-time, you see a lot of lights around all-weather sports facilities they have invested in. If you fly into places in Spain, you see all the wind farms which mean they have cheaper electricity bills and are not as impacted by the energy crisis now as other European countries. If you fly into Dublin Airport, what you see? If you are coming up from Wicklow into Meath, Kildare and west Dublin, what really strikes you as the things that have been developed in the past ten years or so? What has been the priority of the country? You will not see it in other countries; it is data centres. The Government in its addiction to over-provision of data centres has shown where its priorities lie. That has resulted in higher energy prices for people and small businesses and in part in the crisis we are in at the moment. A more efficient process in terms of legislation is important but the priorities of the Government are important as well. Not only was there no pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill, there was no regulatory impact assessment. Why would you want to bother with a regulatory impact assessment for a Bill like this on critical infrastructure that is all about regulation and regulatory processes? The Government just does not bother to do one. Pre-legislative scrutiny was brought in as a reform after the crash to make this Oireachtas much better at doing its job because there was a recognition across the Dáil and the Oireachtas that we needed to do our job as legislators better yet here we go - we will not bother doing it. Either you will not bother doing it or you do not want the assessment to be done. Overall, we strongly support the intention of the Bill. It is very important that we deliver critical infrastructure as efficiently and effectively as possible. We absolutely agree with that intention. For housing, healthcare, education, the climate infrastructure we need, public transport and reducing the cost of living and of doing business, it is important that critical infrastructure is delivered efficiently. However, what rings more alarm bells for me is the section to exempt public bodies from climate laws. There has been no scrutiny of this so far. It really says something stark about the Government's approach in terms of climate action. Why is it that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in the previous Dáil were all for this but now they are no longer in government with the Green Party, they think they can ditch these provisions? It shows a real lack of ongoing commitment to climate action. I found the Minister's comments quite extraordinary in his opening remarks. I am paraphrasing but my read of what the Minister said was to not worry because the Government will be doing the climate stuff anyway. He did not get into the point that it will not be required by law and if the Government does not do it or make serious mistakes, there will be no recourse to the courts or justice system. When the Minister gave a rationale for that exemption, he said it is because the Government does not agree with the motivations, beliefs and ideology of some of the people taking challenges in the courts. He stated "It is abundantly clear that some of these reviews are being taken for ideological reasons". That is quite an extraordinary comment for the Minister to make and I would like to know the basis for that. Who decides what is an ideological judicial review and what is not? Obviously the Minister has decided. I think there is an over-provision and over-concentration of data centres in this country but I would not say that if people engaged in data centre lobbying or businesses wanted to have access to justice, they should be denied it because of their ideological position. I would not say that about anyone. Who decides what is an ideological position that is acceptable or not? The Minister has decided that some of the people taking court cases have ideological positions and therefore should not have these provisions in law. That is quite an extraordinary approach to take. Access to justice is a fundamental part of our process. Independent judicial arbitration and who has access to it should not be decided on by the Minister withdrawing these rights because he thinks some people have ideologies. That is very arbitrary. Judicial activism has been given a bad rap by this Government. As for a lot of the rights we enjoy, such as workers' rights, equal pay for women, equality for the LGBT community, disabled people, the environment and the clean air we breathe, some came from civil society campaigning over the years. Some came from the Oireachtas but some were driven by judicial activism. We live in a better country and a better world because of it and we should not try to write that out of our history. In this legislation there is a lack of transparent process around designation of what is or is not critical infrastructure. This is an issue with the Bill. I am a fan of quite simple legislation. It does not always have to be incredibly long and complex. That does not necessarily serve us well but some of the key challenges in this legislation seem to have been sidestepped by the Government. It is as if it does not know how it will define them or lay out the criteria strongly or clearly or have transparency around the decision-making process and so just will not cover them in the Bill at all. I am not asking for a complex process but there are no provisions or safeguards in the Bill, for example, to stop a Minister prioritising projects that would benefit their own constituency over other projects that serve the national interest. It is critically important that legislation holds water no matter who is in government or what sort of a Minister we have. We have had decades of Ministers favouring projects in their constituencies - not all Ministers but we have had decades of it. This Bill does not give any safeguards and there is no real transparency around designation. Laying it before the Oireachtas does not give proper democratic insight or input. The lack of safeguards needs to be addressed. We have not had any analysis from the Minister, and of course we did not have pre-legislative scrutiny, on why previous critical infrastructure legislation has not worked so there is a lack of potential learning. It was promised, for example, that the strategic housing development legislation would fast-track housing; it did the opposite. It created delays. The Bill fails to address many acute challenges and fundamental problems such as the need to build up State capacity. Of course it is not all about the legislative process but outsourcing so many functions to the private sector has reduced State capacity and has been costly and inefficient. Alongside this Bill, it is important that much stronger capacity is developed in really good community engagement. If there is efficient legislation and good community engagement, we could do much better in delivering the critical infrastructure we desperately need. We will table amendments. I hope the Minister considers them constructively.

Sentiment score: 0.12