Richard Boyd Barrett: Green New Deal Rhetoric vs EU Reality

Ursula van der Leyen's commitment to a Green New Deal and addressing climate change is a positive thing because the climate emergency is a terrifying reality that is hurtling at humanity at a ferocious pace and threatening our existence and the existence of future generations. So, insofar as the popular movement particularly of young people and environmentalists has forced this issue through people power, through the strikes, through the protests, through direct actions, to the top of the political agenda to the extent that Ursula von der Leyen feels the need to state it as our key priority, that is all to the positive. But I really want to contend both at a European wide level but also if you look at the similar rhetorical commitments of this government that there is a sharp stark contrast between verbal commitment and capacity or even a willingness to actually deliver on the sort of radical climate measures that would be necessary to address the climate change. At a European wide level I think Europe is going to be precluded. A philosophy that is a philosophy that is a philosophy that is hard-wired into the European treaties, particularly in the form of state aid rules and the commitment to market mechanisms. And everything, every policy objective, of course, is rammed through this requirement for them to be delivered through a competitive market and through preventing state aid to particular industries. And I would argue that that means, in effect, nothing will really happen because Europe is committed to a privatisation agenda because of those state aid rules, whether consciously but certainly in effect. Public transport is the most obvious example of public transport is the most obvious example of this. If you, on the one hand, if you, on the one hand, pursue the privatisation of public transport, as we are doing and this government is doing here, and is being done right across Europe, and state aid rules then preclude a renationalisation of the public transport system, and transport has to operate on a for-profit basis, how do you actually deliver a public transport system that would be attractive enough for large numbers of people to move away from the private car into using public transport? The answer is, it can't be done. It, in effect, cannot be done. If you take even carbon pricing, which she refers to, what is the effect of carbon pricing? Well, one effect is that the cost of bus fares and public transport fares will increase, not decrease, they'll actually increase, and of course that's what's happened consistently in this country. So, despite privatisation and talk that privatisation will deliver greater efficiency and competition, it doesn't deliver that at all, prices continue to go up, fares continue to go up, and private providers have no interest in providing public transport on routes that they can't make a lot of money from. So, public service obligation routes actually are cut, and you can even see it with the Bus Connects plan at the moment, where the Bus Connects plan is threatening public service obligation routes in favour of high frequency, slash highly profitable commuter routes. So, the routes that your elderly person who's on a bus pass, or, if you like, less profitable routes, they're the ones that come under threat. And, of course, the way you would address that is by much heavier levels of subsidisation, in other words, distorting the market, which are prevented from distorting the market because of the legal rules of the European Union that say you can't do that. Afforestation in this country is another example of it. I mean, we are in the bizarre situation where the national, the state company that is charged and was set up with a specific objective of increasing afforestation is effectively precluded from afforestation because of state aid rules. And has therefore delivered a dismal result in terms of afforestation levels, which are falling, affalling. They've actually fallen in the time I've been in the Dáil, from about 6,000 hectares a year, when I first came into the Dáil, down to about 3,000 hectares. Notwithstanding all sorts of interesting targets that are never met, the actual delivery doesn't happen. And that similarly prevents, I think, the sort of subsidies that would be necessary for the small private farmers because it will distort the market. And, actually, what you end up with is companies like Quilter becoming much more commercial entities focused on commercial forestry crops that are not very good for the environment and, indeed, increasingly even cutting down forests in order to make the way for wind farms or whatever it is, departing completely from their core objective, which is actually to plant trees and steward the national forest estates. And those are just some examples. So, I would argue very strongly that all this rhetoric will, on these and many other sectors where we need dramatic shifts, retrofit and installation of homes, similarly, the sort of state intervention in the economy that is necessary to make the dramatic shifts simply will not happen, because the neoliberal rules of the European market prevent it from actually happening. And the other important point I would make in this regard is that if we are going to have the sort of radical climate action that is necessary, we need to bring the people with us in it. And for many people who are suffering from poverty, from fuel poverty in particular, or just are at the wrong end of the growing levels of income inequality in this country and in Europe, action on climate is increasingly looking like a threat to them that will make them poorer rather than make their lives better. The carbon tax, again, is obviously a good example of that, when the poorest people are likely to be hit hardest by it, hardly endearing the climate agenda to people who are attacked in that way. And, of course, that flows from another critical fact about the European Union. And I thought, and Europe generally, Western capitalism more generally, and that's why I find Taoiseach Faradkar's comments about the wider European agenda preventing the horrors of the 1930s and the 40s and so on. Hello? The far-right are on the rise everywhere in Europe. Notwithstanding, supposedly, that the European Union is supposed to act against a buffer against that, the opposite is happening. They're on the rise in Austria, they're on the rise in Germany, they're on the rise in France, they're on the rise all across Europe. Why? Why? And European leaders better start asking themselves, and when you saw some of the nasty elements gathered outside the Dáil last Saturday, far-right elements actively, sort of consciously seeing themselves as linked to the far-right across Europe, it's a scary thought that this stuff is on the way back. Why? Why is it happening all across Europe? And, of course, the answer is because inequality is growing massively, massively. Wage share, the share that working people take out of national income, all across Europe has fallen and fallen dramatically for the last 30 years. And guess which country is that situation the worst? Ireland. Ireland has seen the biggest fall from the 1970s where labour workers took 60% of national income, they are now down to 40% in national income. The rest, a much higher proportion is going to profits and to the super wealthy, and that pattern is reflected all across the European Union and the Western world. If you want another example of this sort of thing, just look what's happening on the streets of France at the moment, with pensions being attacked. We're wealthier than we've ever been in the Western world. You would think that would yield a dividend for people that they might actually enjoy their old age a bit more, that they might actually have to work a bit less than they used to have to. But what's actually happening is people's pension rights are being attacked. Where are they being attacked worse? In Ireland. Everywhere they're under attack. Macron is attacking them in France, bringing millions of people out in the streets because he wants to move the pension age from 62 to 64. Here we're planning to move the pension age to 68. That hardly endears people to the European vision or to the necessity of the climate action we have to take. So unless those issues are addressed, we've got dark clouds, I would say, looming both environmentally and socially and politically on the European horizon. Thank you Deputy. I now call on Deputy O'Sullivan.