They may well be but I will account for Green Party policy in this area. We absolutely have to work hand in hand with those farmers, who are important custodians of the land. We must also pay them properly. The land use plan will not involve going down to the level of individual farmers and telling them to do this, that or the other because, to be honest, they are best placed to know how to manage the land. They know the land and what happens on it better than anyone in an office in Brussels, Dublin or anywhere els…

I might answer the last question first. That would require European agreement. Planes can move from any one jurisdiction to another. I support the inclusion of aviation fuel within the likes of the NORA levy. I would go beyond that. I think the taxation of aviation fuel is a critical issue, which I believe will be addressed by the European Union. It would have been addressed but the Covid crisis has probably postponed that because with people not flying the demand has fallen right through the floor. I agree with th…

I fully agree with Deputy Naughten that energy efficiency has to come first. However, I must say this to him - he is aware of this - the expertise in that area does not reside within NORA, whose specific task under international law is in how one purchases and stores oil products. The agency does not have the expertise for energy efficiency. The expertise for that resides within the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland and in my Department. I agree that issue needs additional funding but this Bill is not designe…

I reassure the Deputy that there is no additional levy. No additional burden is being put on anyone. What is involved is taking money that has already been collected, and will be collected, and redistributing it. The Deputy might ask where it is going. It is going to go to Kerry. It is going to go to Mayo. It is going to go to Donegal.

In truth-----

In recent months I was at an event down in Kerry. There was a whole slew of new businesses coming forward which see investment opportunities in this area, in particular for counties such as Kerry. As I stated earlier, we will find energy solutions in areas where we have land, and it is also in areas close to the sea where we can tap into that energy. The wealth generated by the renewable energy sector will not sit in urban Ireland, it will be in rural Ireland. This Bill is taking money that has already been collect…

I have a long answer but I will be brief. Perhaps I will put it aside.

I have one point to make to Deputy Naughten, if I can. This fund is not paid for by the oil companies. They collect it. It is paid for by the motorists. That is one thing to be absolutely clear, honest and accurate about. If I can refer it to Deputy Mattie McGrath, who asked me whether I was listening, the key question he asked was why could we not have used the money already raised. To answer Deputy Naughten's earlier concerns, in section 14, the proposed new section 37A(8)(b) states "Any moneys referred to in par…

What this fund is designed to do as well as big projects, such as the Bord na Móna projects I mentioned earlier, is to help small communities be part of the process and the transformation. It will be a small help maybe in those cases but every bit helps in terms of everyone being part of it. If we do this, we can get to what Deputy Fitzmaurice said, which is public support for a range of developments we will have to make in new energy projects, new forestry and new farming mechanisms and practices. It is on this ba…

This is only one piece in the jigsaw of changes we will have to make. We will have to ring-fence funds. We have to ring-fence the funds from carbon taxation for social welfare increases to protect people from fuel poverty, to improve people's homes and to establish new farming initiatives that support farmers. We will have to do a range of work on communications on how we get this as a bottom-up, community-led system. To answer the key question on this timeline, I return to the fact that this has been in gestation …

I am responding to the Deputies on this matter because the formal transfer of tourism functions to my colleague the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Catherine Martin, has yet to be completed. Shannon Heritage is part of the Shannon Group, which operates in the aviation and tourism sectors. In addition to the dramatic fall-off in passengers at Shannon Airport, the closure and restricted openings of some Shannon Heritage sites means that the impact on the group has been particularly severe. I …

I thank the Deputies. They are right. Not only does the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Catherine Martin, have an interest in this, I and the Minister of State, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, are very aware that the Shannon Group as a whole is in real difficulty, along with the rest of the aviation and tourism sector. I will commit to examining the proposal from the Shannon Group. The Deputies made the point that the indicative cost may include the cost of the wage subsidy scheme, which the St…

I am.

I thank Deputy MacSharry for raising this important matter. The Deputy will recall that since the scale of the governance of financial mismanagement within the FAI became clear over the past year, the FAI has been in a financial crisis the likes of which has never been faced by an Irish sporting body. On 30 January, the then Government took the decision to ensure the survival of the association by approving an agreement to participate in a joint funding package for the FAI. The MOA which was signed by the then Mini…

We are all concerned and looking to support the grassroots and the future development of Irish soccer. The way that has to be done is for the MOU to be agreed in full. That will require the FAI to convene an EGM this month to implement rule changes to provide for an increase to six independent directors on its board and it will require those members of the FAI council with more than ten years' service to stand down. That has to be delivered. That is the message coming from the Government, not from any one Secretary…

I thank Deputy O'Rourke for his kind words and I look forward to working with him over the coming years. He is right that our parties share a common aim and ambition in terms of how we place this country at the centre of leadership in tackling the climate and biodiversity crisis. As Minister with responsibility for climate action, I will lead on delivering our shared commitment to achieve an average 7% per annum reduction in overall greenhouse gas emissions from 2021 to 2030, and to achieving net zero emissions by …

I agree fully that now is the time to invest and now is the time to act. However, some of those actions, such as introducing the maritime spatial planning legislation to allow us to develop offshore wind, will not actually deliver emissions reductions until the latter part of this decade. It does take that length of time. As to the scale of investment, we are talking of hundreds of millions if not billions of euro, which we should borrow now, but borrow in the knowledge that by the time we get through the planning …

The delivery of renewables will have to be through both the large-scale projects, such as the offshore projects I have just mentioned, and much smaller projects, so that it is more widely owned. That starts, for example, in the retrofitting of buildings, where we will be taking out an oil or gas-fired boiler and putting in a heat pump powered with renewable electricity. This will help us to balance renewable power in the long run, when we have a large stock of heat pumps that we can turn on and off to match the win…

I thank the Deputy for his good wishes and look forward to working with him in this Thirty-third Dáil. First and foremost, our preparation for cyberattacks has improved. I have returned to the same Ministry where I was ten years ago. At that time, a single individual was working on an informal basis, as much as anything else, to protect our systems. That has now been replaced with the new National Cyber Security Centre, NCSC, which is located within my Department. It is the primary cybersecurity authority in the St…

It is true that the importance of this work cannot be understated but I am confident, from my initial briefings from departmental officials, that the scale and expertise are sufficient in the office. The Deputy will be aware that there are other areas of expertise in the State, including in the Garda and Defence Forces, where there are additional resources. Bringing those resources together is often what is needed. I do not have a completion time for the review but I will ask the Department to revert directly to th…