David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Hang on a second. This is more of the nonsense. Those people Mr. Carroll is talking about have their homes heated by oil or gas. If an increase is put on their oil or gas, although insulation can be put in their homes and that is fine, they are still using oil and gas, and what the Department is doing is increasing the cost for them. It is not allowing them to transform their home into one that has an electric heat pump, for example, or some alternative and it is going to take an awful long time for us to get to that position. It is just increasing the carbon tax on them, not just this year, but next year, the year after and the year after that.

I have a question on the just transition, which is important. We had the trade unions before the Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment recently and Patricia King headed a delegation of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. She was scathing in her criticism of the Department, the Government, Bord na Móna and the ESB. Two plants were closed and no just transition has been put in place. Ms King feels many of the workers will lose their jobs without any transition being in place. Bord na Móna has refused even to engage with the unions and is refusing to engage with the just transition forum that the Government says is going to be put in place. An announcement was made prematurely to close the two ESB plants in question and three Government Ministers scrambled down to the midlands to talk to the workers.

Mr. Carroll talked earlier about the €70 million that will come from the carbon tax increase in a full year. The Comptroller and Auditor General might be right that it may not be €70 million next year but we will see what that figure is. Mr. Carroll talked about the money for the midlands that is being made available for retrofitting. There is no retrofit plan in place. They are still looking at the detail of it and trying to work out what that will mean. The Department does not have a plan for those workers.

We all knew a just transition was necessary. We all knew for years that those plants were going to have to close and that there had to be plans in place. Yet, here we are, already prematurely closing some of the plants, when the trade unions who represent the workers say the just transition has been a farce. A just transition commissioner is being appointed who does not have any remit in regard to workers - none whatsoever. Is that not correct? Ms King was quite critical of that as well. How is it the case, when we have workers potentially losing their jobs, that the most senior trade union leader in the country can say Bord na Móna is refusing to engage with the unions and is involved in de-unionising the company?