Section 7 of this Bill represents a fundamental attack on the provisions of the climate action Act passed in this House in 2021 with the support of 129 Members from the Green Party, the Labour Party, the Social Democrats, People Before Profit, Sinn Féin and, crucially, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Now, five years later, this Critical Infrastructure Bill means that any project that is designated as critical infrastructure will no longer have its climate impact examined. Today, the Government is seeking to repeal, by the back door, a central aspect of the climate action Act. Let me set out how the Critical Infrastructure Bill does this. Section 15 of the climate action Act 2021 puts a legal duty on public bodies to perform their actions in a manner that is consistent with the climate Act. It places a climate duty on all public bodies, including the National Transport Authority, NTA, An Coimisiún Pleanála and the Department of public expenditure. It places that duty on all public bodies. Under section 7 of this Bill, when the Minister designates a project or programme as critical infrastructure, that climate duty no longer applies. To put this in context, over Christmas, the Minister for climate, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, announced that the Government was giving up on achieving Ireland's 2030 emissions targets four years before the deadline. Today, this Bill proposes to remove the climate duty from public bodies when they are undertaking assessments of major projects in the areas of water, transport and energy. Those are the very projects that will be the most consequential to our ability to meet those climate targets. The real-life implication of section 7 is to specifically deny bodies, such as An Coimisiún Pleanála, the ability to take the climate impact of major projects into account when making decisions about granting them planning permission. It applies irrespective of whether the project has a potentially positive climate impact, such as the wind farm in the Coolglass judgment, or a negative impact, such as a new liquefied natural gas, LNG, terminal. Section 7 of the Bill will, ironically, prevent the climate benefits of some projects counting in favour of whether that project should be granted planning permission. Let us take an example. Say the NTA is trying to advance a new Luas line and there is a judicial review challenge to it on the basis that somebody does not want his or her garden to be the subject of a compulsory purchase order, CPO. The argument that in deciding to advance the project, the NTA was fulfilling its climate duty under section 15 of the climate action Act will no longer be available to the NTA because of section 7 of this Bill. While projects that will have a negative climate impact will be shielded by this Bill, the big projects that will have a positive climate impact will lose the additional legal protection that they enjoy as a result of the climate duty. Considering how damaging section 7 is, why is it being proposed? This Bill is being promoted by the Government on the basis of cutting timelines and eliminating delays. We need to speed up our planning system and there are elements in the Government's accelerating infrastructure plan that I welcomed last December. If they were in a stand-alone Bill, I would have no problem supporting it. However, the Government has produced no evidence that the climate duty is delaying infrastructure delivery. When the Minister launched the Accelerating Infrastructure Report and Action Plan in December, there was not one single reference to the climate action Act as a source of delays. I put the question to civil servants at the transport committee and the climate committee whether removing the climate duty would speed up the process and, on both occasions, the relevant civil servants were unable to say, "Yes, this will speed up the process." This evening, the Minister has indicated he is advancing section 7 because of judicial reviews. Can he enumerate the judicial reviews that have been taken on the basis of section 15 to date? Will he list them for us? Section 7 is not about speeding up the delivery of infrastructure. It is about repealing the climate action Act by the back door and protecting carbon intensive projects, the very projects that have caused our existing high levels of emissions as a country, from public scrutiny. No pre-legislative scrutiny was permitted on this Bill, despite its huge implications for climate and planning policy. Therefore, in place of PLS, I will ask the Minister a few questions. Can he confirm that a strategic infrastructure project can only cover a project being proposed by a State body or agency and cannot cover a privately-funded project? Will he state whether he intends for data centres to fall within the definition of what could be designated as critical infrastructure? Can he confirm that a direction under section 6(2) of the Bill cannot include a direction to a local authority or An Coimisiún Pleanála to grant or reject planning permission for a specific project? In his conclusion, the Minister spoke about judicial reviews being taken for ideological reasons. This Bill represents an act of gross irresponsibility but I recognise it is entirely consistent with the approach the Government has taken since it assumed office last January because there is ideology at play here. A clear ideology is articulated across Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Independents. It is to lessen, undermine, defund and reverse climate action whenever it gets the opportunity. As I said when I spoke on the confidence motion and on the Government's retreat from the carbon tax earlier today, this Government has demonstrated it does not possess the belief in our energy transition and the decarbonisation of our economy to make the case for the change convincingly to the Irish people. This Bill is one more articulation of that ideology which lies at the heart of this Government.

Sentiment score: 0.05