Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator Gavan for moving the amendment on behalf of Senators Black and Higgins. I understand the Senator's concern, which I share, that the Bill should have a positive effect and that this should be spread as widely as possible throughout the country. The point of the Bill is to further enhance the regulatory and cultural changes that were made in the financial services industry following the very serious situation that led to the financial crash. This was reflected in the dialogue Senator McDowell and I had around trying to impose a much broader administrative sanctions regime on people who work in financial institutions, with the intent of making everybody aware of their obligations to not just customers but, more broadly, the protection of the financial services system which is there to serve and provide finance to society, SMEs and corporations in order to enable them to grow, develop, move into markets outside of Ireland and employ people.

We sometimes forget what the role of a financial services industry is, and people have the notion of it being somehow separate or something that is not of relevance to them. If we think about it, financial services are about the provision of banking and insurance. How the financial decisions and investment decisions behind all of those things are made is of deep relevance to us all, not just in terms of sustainability and the security of our investments but also, as the Senator correctly identified, sustainable finance. The House will, of course, be aware that the Ireland for finance strategy has at its core sustainable finance as a key objective. I will come back to that. It is the broader point of the legislation.

Regarding the specific amendment, the word "society" is not a legislative word and is not one we can include in the Bill without difficulty. The purpose of what the amendment is trying to achieve is very important.

I might go back to the sustainable finance piece. The Senator correctly identified lending by institutions to certain types of organisations. We consider these as brown- and green-type organisations. There are lenders, for example, which lend very considerably to brown but also to green. The real question is around how that changes and moves in a practical and realistic way, week by week and month by month, and how we discuss and consider that. Thinking about how we move from brown to light brown or light green is a good thing, as opposed to continuing with activities that have significantly negative climate implications.

We are going to have to have an honest conversation about that and name it as a process with financial institutions. Otherwise, we divorce ourselves from it. Standing outside and constantly criticising will not work. We need to be transparent, clear and monitor progression.

The Senator will be aware of the considerable disclosure requirements on organisations regarding their funding and investing. I spoke to one financial services organisation in London on Monday last as part of my role to advance Ireland as a location for financial services and try to advance the jobs we can gain from that, as well as the capital investment and assets being held here. One organisation told me that its usual report runs to 400 pages but that its disclosure requirements involve the production of an additional 800 pages. There are considerable disclosure requirements. It may or may not be the case that the Senator and I are going to go through those and monitor them. It also may or not be the case that what is envisaged would provide the sort of transparency that is necessary in an accessible way. It may be a case of money for lawyers doing the same thing. That is not quite clear. The point is that the obligations are there already. We can do better and go further. Obviously, the EU is taking the lead on this politically and is achieving agreement on the taxonomy that is appropriate and identifying the source of things that should or should not be invested in and how that transitions over time.

Let us not forget that our information is improving all the time. Something that we deem appropriate to invest in April may, as we acquire better information about the nature of that or new technologies that are better emerge, no longer be appropriate in June. We have to acknowledge that this is the process that we all have to go through in an honest and transparent way, with the best information. The transition to a climate-friendly, improved world requires that honesty.It is in that way, as Minister of State with responsibility for financial services with a strong personal interest in sustainable finance and with sustainable finance at the heart of the Ireland for Finance strategy, the recent discourse around the Coillte investment in the reforestation was of concern to me. If one takes away the individual circumstances of the scheme and the dialogue around it and steps back a little, investment in climate projects is precisely what we want to happen. Investment in housing is what we want to happen. However, we cannot have a conversation that says that reforestation, the roll-out of renewables or whatever is what we want and is a key strategic objective for the State, and is essential from a climate perspective, but we do not want this person or that to do it and we do not want that to happen in that way.

We will have to recognise that we need financial services investment to build out the climate transition infrastructure that we need. How do we get it? How do we do it quickly? How do we make it attractive? What is the best return from the State's perspective in marrying that with State activity or not? What is the most efficient way of doing that in terms of private investment versus State investment? How we think about all of those things is, as the Senator will be aware, exceptionally complex. However, this is all happening in the Department of Finance. This is all happening within the Ireland for Finance strategy. I can assure the Senator that it is at the heart of my concerns in all aspects of my job.