Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Professor Morgenroth is correct. It is the unintended consequences of a good intention. The good intention in Dublin was to get people out of the slums. We did that by bringing them out to Drimnagh, Fairview and all these fantastic garden city estates where one could still walk and cycle into town. It was brilliant and it worked. As it worked, we did not stop. Then we went out to Tallaght, Blanchardstown and Finglas but we did not put in bus and other services to match it. Then we just kept going to Rathoath, Mullingar and Gorey. We are now going from Gorey to Enniscorthy and we will expect people to commute from there to Dublin. One would think we would learn at some point that the unintended consequences of that good intention will have to stop.

Widespread fraud seems to have been uncovered in the registering of palm oil as used cooking oil. The UK’s Serious Fraud Office and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management are investigating this. The EU said that the next use of those cooking oils will have to be restricted to 1.7%. It seems the Union knows there is widespread fraud in this area. For example, Taiwan’s exports of used cooking oil exceed the total volume of cooking oil in the entire country. Does this have implications for Ireland? When one asks the Government how we are meeting our targets, it says we are doing great on renewables and transport because of all this blended-in used cooking oil. If a large percentage of that fuel is fraudulent, will we face higher fines for failing to meet our renewables directive targets after 2020?