‘Nature needs politics’

Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications with responsibility for Communications and Circular Economy, Ossian Smyth TD, states that nature and the environment need political will to deliver transformative change.

Suggesting that previous governments did little to prioritise policy to protect Ireland’s environment, climate, and biodiversity, Smyth believes that while some of the electorate have a negative perception of politicians generally, they do have a pivotal role in safeguarding the country’s environment.

“Politics, of course, has a bad name,” he says, adding: “I think it is associated with bad things in people’s minds, but we need politics and nature need politics. What I mean by that is nature and the environment need genuine political and prioritised support. Over the last 20 years, there has not always been support in Irish politics for the environment.

“There have not been people saying that we need to spend money to protect nature, or we need to spend time or political capital protecting nature.”

Activism and public attitude

Smyth credits the change in political indifference to the continued campaign of climate justice by young people and climate activists and suggests that if it were not for continued protests and campaigning by activists and concerned citizens urging the Government to take more measures to safeguard the environment, he would not be Minister of State.

“If we go back to May 2019, there was a climate protest called by young people in St Stephen’s Green,” Smyth recalls.

“I remember going there and thinking: ‘What is happening?,’ because the whole side of Stephen’s Green from the shopping centre all the way to the Shelbourne Hotel was full of 10,000 young people [who were] full of enthusiasm and excitement.

“A few months later, in September 2019, there were 20,000 people out on the streets and this was a follow-on from Greta Thunberg’s ‘Fridays for Future’ movement. She inspired this movement, and it was a global movement were people, particularly young people, felt their future was at risk. That influenced the elections that happened in 2019 and 2020, and it is the reason that I am here now.”

Legislative accomplishments

After the formation of the new coalition government, then Green Party leader Eamon Ryan TD, along with the other Green ministers, pursued comprehensive climate legislation.

In 2021, the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act was signed into law, committing the State to meet decarbonisation targets by 2030 and a net zero national climate objective by 2050.

“We passed the first binding climate law in Ireland and that sets us on a course to halve our emissions by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2050,” Smyth records.

“That is landmark legislation and something that is going to last beyond this government.”

To date, Ireland has contracted 3GW of offshore wind, with the long-term plan being for the country to reach 20GW of offshore wind by 2040 and 37GW by 2050, meaning Ireland would produce over 12 per cent of Europe’s total energy from offshore wind.

Smyth also commends the EU’s Nature Restoration Law, which aims to rehabilitate at least 20 per cent of European land, inland waters and sea areas by 2030 and all degraded ecosystems by 2050. Almost nine per cent of Irish land is expected to be directly affected by the law.

“What I found in the Nature Restoration Law was that when I went out to the media and talked about it and appealed to people with questions like: ‘Do you as Irish people love nature, do you find that there is a value in nature, and is it something you want to protect?’, people responded with a resounding yes, and they also said they do not want to lose the animals and the creatures that are symbols of our country,” the Minister of State adds.

Support for renewable energy

Smyth emphasised the fact that offshore wind is a “huge resource” for Ireland. He asserts that the country has ideal locations for offshore wind that has been overlooked.

To date, while there are 79 offshore wind farm projects planned within the State, only one is operational. Excluding Arklow Bank, the rest of the projects are not in the build phase and as per ORESS 1, there are only five projects which are either consented or have applied for consent.

Smyth highlights that while no new offshore wind farms have been built in Ireland since 2004, by contrast, Europe has built 1,000 equivalents of the wind farm in Arklow in the last 20 years.

Smyth states that while there has been push back from “a noisy minority” regarding offshore wind, he claims that at least two-thirds of Irish citizens support offshore wind, even in areas where people have a view of the sea. His claim is bolstered by a 2021 survey conducted by researchers and scientists at the University College Cork, which found that 63 per cent believed that offshore wind farms will increase Ireland’s job creation potential and that a clear majority of people who took part in the survey were in favour of offshore wind farms.

“Within a few years’ time, the first of the [new offshore] wind farms will appear and the first one is going to appear in my constituency [of Dún Laoghaire], off the coast of Dalkey,” Smyth outlines.

“Unfortunately it takes more than one term in office and more than five years to do all the consenting, to make the laws and to get the capital in. One thing I can say from government is that there has been no silver bullet and there is no one amazing thing we can do that fixes everything,” he adds.

Reflecting on his time as Minister of State, Smyth is optimistic about the legacy his party has left on policy and legislation.

“It really has been an amazing time for me to spend directing changes; making changes to the world that I can walk past, and seeing public attitudes changing to a position where I never thought we would get to – where people take things for granted that would have seemed farfetched a few years ago.”