Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

It is a fossil fuel. It is not clean. It is a fossil fuel. It might not be quite as dirty as oil but it is not somewhere in between renewable energy and fossil fuels. It is not the position that wind energy and wave energy are on one side, oil energy on the opposite side and gas somewhere in the middle. It is a fossil fuel by any definition of what a fossil fuel is. The only reasonable opposition to the inclusion of gas that the Government could put forward is that it will be used during the transition. That is covered by Deputy Pringle's amendment No. 1. To the extent it is being used as a transitional fuel, it is covered and is excluded. It is in line with Government policy when it talks about fossil fuels. The reason behind trying to exclude it is to create some kind of special category for gas and to say that gas is somehow not a fossil fuel when it is. I ask the Minister of State to accept that gas is a fossil fuel by any reasonable definition.

I will pick up on something the Minister of State said about the money message. Did he say that if we do not reach agreement, the Government will decide this needs a money message and will not give it?