It is not saying "No" to someone in rural Ireland about what should be in rural Ireland. Those in rural Ireland will probably the first to lead on the benefit of change because they will be the custodians of the land. They will be the best suited for electric vehicles because they will be able to charge their cars much more easily than someone in a terraced house on a street or in an apartment. The real industrial revolution is how we manage the distribution grid as well as the transmission grid. To my mind, stoppi…

No, the Bill does not go into these details. What the Bill says is we will all sit down and work out a mechanism to deliver it. The Oireachtas will be critically involved. The mechanism in the Bill is-----

-----that we come back at each stage. When the five-year budgets are put in place and when we are doing the sectoral plan and action plan, we will check to see whether there is another way. We do have to do it. The reason it makes sense for us to do this is not just because we are compelled to do so because every country is doing it under the UN Paris Agreement. In agriculture more than anything else, if we do what we can do, we will have a form of agriculture that is the best for animal welfare, the best for resto…

One can. One can do it in a slow way so that over time, one gets a steady stream of products and really high value. One converts that into really high-value material that one puts into one's building stock so that one will not be stuck with what one will see now, that is, the massive price inflation of building materials, because it will come from our resources. It would be a strong, local economy. Mr. Berry said that what we would aim for would be a strong local human community, a local natural community or ecosys…

I move: "That Second Stage be taken now."

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." It is time for us to take action as signatories of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It is time, five years after the signing of the Paris climate agreement, for us to start to show real ambition and bring this home. It is also time for hope. There is some hope in this country these days that we may be able to manage the worst of this Covid-19 pandemic and start to see days that are slightly brighter than the hard days we have seen in the p…

-----to come in to manage the land and protect nature. They will be the front-line heroes of this transformation with this climate action plan. It is also a chance for the economy in terms of what we make and sell to the rest of the world. We will still have to be open and engage and collaborate with the world.

We have everything to gain from going green in tourism, in the high-tech, low-carbon manufacturing that we are really skilled in, in farming, food and in every one of the industries that is strong in this country. We have everything to gain from going green, but we need to change.

We need to change from putting all the blame, shame and pressure on the consumer for doing the right thing and instead change the system so that it is easier for people to do the right thing. That is what this Bill is about. It is a Bill for system change that delivers a just transition, a new economic model that is fairer, more balanced, more secure and sustainable in every way.

To change the system, we need our system – the public service and the agencies of the State-----

-----which must take the lead, be flexible and creative and be willing to make mistakes and to learn from other countries and share with them what we are doing. We are stepping up as leaders today and, more than anyone else, it is the public service that will step up as leaders. I thank the officials and advisers in my Department and in others who have been central to the drafting of this legislation.

We are lucky and proud to have the public service that we have, whose staff are independent, straight and hard working. This is going to put them to the test. This legislation, more than anything else, is going to put significant demands on them. I will set out in the provisions how they will do their work and what they are going to do in the next 30 years. As is proper procedure during the Second Reading of the Bill I will now set out the provisions in the Bill. At the core of this Bill is the national climate obj…

Our increased ambition to 2030, in law, will ensure that for the first time Ireland goes beyond just setting targets.

It instead guarantees, to the best extent possible, that we deliver on our fair share of the global effort, in essence, providing real climate justice. Of key significance in this Bill is the embedding, in a statutory process, of carbon budgeting and sectoral emission targets. Carbon budgets will explicitly cover the whole economy, include all greenhouse gases and provide a ceiling of total emissions allowed within a five-year period. Three consecutive five-year carbon budgets are set once every five years as part …

This approach provides an appropriate balance between certainty and flexibility. It provides certainty on our medium-term goals-----

If the clock can be stopped, I will take the point of order.

It is a protest-----

It also offers an appropriate level of flexibility to allow, where necessary, a degree of adjustment and reorientation of plans and strategies over time and within different sectors. The Climate Change Advisory Council, which is an independent statutory body established under the 2015 Act, will have a crucial role to play in developing carbon budgets and is given additional responsibility, through this Bill, to propose carbon budgets to the Minister. Following Government approval of the carbon budget programme, the…

The Bill also provides for the need to have regard to the social and economic imperative for early and cost-effective action, the need for a just transition which supports peoples and communities that may be negatively impacted and the need to maximise employment and the attractiveness of the State for investment. The fact is that the means of achieving a carbon neutral economy and other measures to enable the State to pursue the national climate objective may not yet be fully identified and may evolve over time, t…

I would be happy to do that.