Air Pollution (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-28 ============================================================ Chris Andrews (SF), Labour Panel We are disappointed that the amendments have been ruled out of order. Sinn Féin will be tabling further amendments on later Stages of this Bill. Sinn Féin supports strong action to improve air quality. Cleaner air saves lives. It reduces respiratory illnesses, protects children’s health and improves quality of life for communities across the State. There is no disagreement about the need to tackle air pollution. The question is how we do it and who bears the cost of that transition. If we get the balance wrong and policy is designed without regard to lived reality, then households, particularly older people, rural families and those already struggling with fuel poverty, become collateral damage in a transition they did not create and cannot currently afford. While this Bill does not introduce new household restrictions, it sits in the context of previous bans and regulations that have already had a disproportionate impact on certain households. That is why Sinn Féin tabled these amendments, to ensure that the clean air policy is also a fair air policy. The first amendment we proposed inserts clear definitions into the principal Act, including for fuel poverty, solid fuel homes and vulnerable households. This is not a technical tidying up. It is foundational. You cannot design a just policy if you refuse to name the people most affected by it. Fuel poverty is not an abstract concept; it is the daily reality of households who must choose between heating and food and between warmth and dignity. By defining solid fuel homes, we acknowledge a simple truth. Tens of thousands of homes across rural Ireland are not connected to the gas network. They do not have affordable alternatives and cannot simply switch at the stroke of a pen. By defining vulnerable households, including older people, people with disabilities and those with chronic health conditions, we are recognising that cold homes are not merely uncomfortable, but dangerous. If legislation does not explicitly recognise these realities, then it risks legislating against them. The next set of amendments we proposed to introduce were mandatory household safeguards for when fuel regulations were being made. These provisions would require the Minister to consider the risk of fuel poverty, the availability and affordability of alternatives and the need for a just transition, not just in theory, but in practice. Crucially, these fuels are restricted or prohibited. These amendments would have required hardship exemptions for households in fuel poverty and vulnerable households, time-limited transitional arrangements for solid fuel homes and clear, simple and non-digital application processes. This matters deeply. Too often, we design schemes that assume broadband access, digital literacy, spare cash up front and contractor availability, assumptions that simply do not hold in many rural and older households. The previously introduced bans have already shown us what happens when safeguards are not strong enough. Elderly people in rural areas, many living alone and on fixed incomes, were left fearful of fines, confused by rules and with no viable alternative heating option. This is not climate action; this is policy failure. It provides a defence where a household is accused of an offence related to solid fuel use, but they do not have reasonable access to supports. Let me be clear, in that Sinn Féin does not support blanket exemptions forever. What we oppose is a punitive approach that criminalises people for being less well-off. The amendment would recognise the reality that people cannot retrofit homes overnight, that contractors are not available in every county, that waiting lists are long and that grants often require significant upfront costs. It would ensure that enforcement focused where it belonged, namely, on commercial premises, large-scale polluters and suppliers, not on older people trying to heat one room in the middle of winter. We are proposing a dedicated, ring-fenced retrofitting and clean heat scheme specifically for solid fuel homes because right now these homes are effectively locked out of transition. They are told to change but denied the means to do so. Our scheme would prioritise households in fuel poverty and vulnerable households, be tiered by income with fully funded measures for low-income households, and support insulation and heating upgrades, chimney safety, stove replacements and, where possible, cleaner connections. It would also include non-digital access, local advice and delivery mechanisms that actually worked in areas with limited number of contractors. Critically, it would be reported on annually to ensure transparency, accountability and delivery county by county. This is what a just transition looks like - not punishment first and support later, but support first and transition later. We must acknowledge that air pollution does not recognise borders. This is why Sinn Féin supports the establishment of an all-island task force on air pollution. Co-ordination, data sharing and joint standards make sense environmentally, economically and socially, particularly for Border regions that already experience regulatory inconsistency. We cannot keep passing legislation while failing to properly resource local authorities. Enforcement without staffing, expertise and funding is meaningless and undermines public confidence in environmental law. Sinn Féin believes in clean air, but we also believe in fairness, dignity and common sense. Households should not be punished because they cannot afford access to alternatives and older people should not fear enforcement because they live in homes that the State itself has failed to retrofit. Rural communities should not be asked to carry a burden created by decades of underinvestment. A just transition must be planned, funded and inclusive, or it is not just. These amendments would have provided the balance that this legislation needs. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-01-28/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:33+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-28