Yesterday, Uisce Éireann announced that areas in 12 counties, from Donegal to Wexford, are officially suffering a water drought. This is at a time when we have seen tragic flash floods in Texas, wildfires outside Marseilles and an extended heatwave in many countries across Europe that is about to hit Ireland. Before I came in here, I got an alert on my phone from Met Éireann that it has issued a hot weather warning. Do not get me wrong, the bit of sun is great, but we need to recognise that this is not normal for Ireland and that our current drought is a result of a drier-than-normal autumn, winter and spring. This is climate change in action. Paradoxically, we have just had a wetter-than-normal June but, because of our creaking water infrastructure, almost 40% of our treated water is lost. There are more leaks in our pipes than are coming out of Cabinet meetings. The state of our water infrastructure is holding up the development of much-needed housing, and new housing is plugging into crumbling old pipes and putting unsustainable pressure on the whole system. We are facing water restrictions ultimately. Just ask the residents of Dargle Wood, Knocklyon, in my constituency of Dublin South-West about our water infrastructure. They have faced over 12 water outages this year alone.

The broader picture is our climate preparedness and climate action, or the lack thereof. Ever since the programme for Government was published, the Labour Party has had serious concerns about this Government’s commitment to addressing the climate crisis. Last week, in the climate committee, the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, basically waved the white flag in saying the best we can hope for now is that we might get about halfway to meeting our 2030 emissions reduction targets. People want to take climate action, but we know from a recent survey carried out by the climate Department that people’s overriding feeling when it comes to this Government and climate action is frustration. People feel hamstrung by this Government’s inaction and delay in providing even the most basic measures to allow them to engage in climate action. People want to retrofit their homes, but the system of grants restricts this to well-off households with significant savings. We in the Labour Party want to see a street-by-street retrofitting scheme backed by green loans. People want to switch to public transport but the services are not there or are already at capacity.

We need more rail services and, in the short term, projects like BusConnects need to be prioritised. How in God's name has it taken eight years and counting to get a few new bus lanes put in? In the absence of public transport, people feel they cannot make the switch from petrol or diesel to EVs because our charging infrastructure is so lacking. Farmers are getting mixed messages and, meanwhile, there are insufficient compensation schemes to enable the necessary changes to our agricultural policy and ensure a just transition.

Earlier this week, the European Commission published its latest environmental implementation review of Ireland, identifying a €3.3 billion investment gap. Will the Government commit to providing the investment required to fill that gap in order to avoid climate disaster, improve our infrastructure, which will help us on climate, and support people to make the climate-positive changes they want to make in their lives?

It is welcome to have a question on climate as I am not sure we, as a Dáil, are having the level of focus and discussion needed on this issue. The climate emergency has not gone away; far from it. We need to look at how we can accelerate the pace of change that needs to take place. We need a conversation about how we bring people with us, on which the Deputy had some good ideas. I, too, know people who would like to retrofit their home or switch to an electric vehicle but cost is still a barrier. We, as a Government, must reflect on that.

The short answer to the Deputy's question is "Yes". He will begin to see real and meaningful intent when we publish our national development plan, which I hope will be at the end of this month. It will show a commitment in areas like investing in water infrastructure, supporting Irish Water, accelerating the delivery of renewable energy and investing more in transport, including public transport. The Cabinet committee on climate action, environment and energy met this week and had a good and detailed discussion on climate policy. The latest data from the Environmental Protection Agency, which made a presentation to the committee, shows that Ireland's emissions continue to fall for the third year in a row and are at their lowest level in three decades.

I say that not because we are where we need to be but because we do not want to inject a sense of fatalism into the debate, which the Deputy is not doing. We are able to make more progress as a country. Emissions decreased by 2% in 2024 and by 10.6% between 2021 and 2024. Ireland now has the lowest level of greenhouse gas emissions in 35 years. This is more significant when we consider that this period saw 1.5 million more people living in the country and over a million more homes. We are achieving reductions at a time when our economy is, thankfully, continuing to grow strongly.

However, the Deputy is entirely correct that we have a long way to go to get to our 2030 climate targets. Certainly, there is no white flag being raised by the Government. The next phase has to be about acceleration. It has to be about how we can do more and do it more quickly. That is why the Government has announced our intention to establish a new climate investment clearing house to try to accelerate progress on our energy transition. That is the big dial change. If we can get to that energy transition, we can stop using dirty fuels and start being able to produce clean renewable energy.

There are a number of commitments in the programme for Government on climate. They include strengthening governance structures around the climate action plan, achieving energy independence by harnessing renewable energy resources, ramping up home retrofits, improving grants, on which we have given a commitment, enabling communities to secure grid access for local renewable projects and supporting the just transition commission to ensure no community is left behind. One of the big decisions the previous Government made was the establishment of the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund. We are putting billions of euro aside to be able to invest in that transition.

I have read the Commission's report on our implementation of EU environmental law. My honest evaluation is that it is a mixed bag. It points to some areas of progress over the past year, including in biodiversity, our clean air strategy, the publication of successive climate action plans and the binding legislation.

I am glad to hear about the Government's focus on accelerating what we are doing. However, the fact remains that we are not meeting our climate targets. While there was a 6% reduction in emissions in 2023, there was only a 2% reduction in 2024. The EPA is saying we are going backwards. This is because we are seeing significantly slower progress than needed on many fronts, like onshore wind, offshore wind, electric vehicles, district heating and the use of biomethane, not to mention the impact of the new LNG fossil fuel terminals the Government is promoting and the data centres that are not required to use renewable energy.

We are told all the time that money is no object to our taking action on climate. Will the Government please pull out all the stops with the new national development plan? Will it invest in the infrastructure we need to mitigate the climate crisis, including our water pipe network, which is so bad it is not able to ensure people have water right after a month of abnormally heavy rain? I ask the Government, please, to invest in our future and to support legislation to establish a future generations commissioner, who will challenge the short-termism we have seen from too many Governments and embed future thinking across government.

Will the revised national development plan be framed to ensure we meet our climate targets? Will the Tánaiste commit to addressing the environmental investment gap?

We are committed to providing the investment that is required. I am being very honest in saying I am not convinced currently of the need for more legislation in this area. There is a lot of legislation in place. It is an implementation issue now in terms of how quickly we can accelerate delivery.

Most sectors of our economy are seeing a decrease in emissions, including agriculture and transport. Our electricity is now cleaner than ever before. Last year marked the first year in which no peat was used for power generation, which was a symbolic end to a high-carbon era. It reflects the structural transformation under way in our energy network. Wind energy provided 48% of Ireland's power last February. In January, Ireland reached the important milestone of hitting 5 GW of installed onshore wind capacity. EV sales increased by 23% in April this year compared with the same month last year. Home retrofitting is scaling up. I agree with the Deputy that we need to go further but we are beginning to see the direction of travel. We must back that up with investment but also by making sure projects are delivered more quickly, particularly in the area of offshore renewable energy.