Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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There is an awful lot of talk about global warming and climate change. My views are well known on this. While I agree the climate changes, I do not concur with many people's views as to how it changes. Back over the ages and through the centuries, there has been climate change when we did not have as many cows, highly intensive farming or mechanical engines or vehicles. The climate always changes. I am reliably told that, if this country were to become completely emission-free, the difference it would make in the worldwide context is only 0.13%. The rest of the world would make up 99.87%. Our farmers and our business people are targeted in an unfair fashion in the overall context of some people's views on climate change and global warming.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Land Commission threatened farmers that if they did not till one acre of their farm, they would lose it and it would be divided among their neighbours. That happened and people had to go to England to survive. One farm beside me was taken off the owners in such circumstances. Then along came the Agricultural Training Council, ACOT. Farmers were the best custodians of the land and knew how to manage their land. Every farmer knew the grass yield of his farm. One farm might be known as the grass of seven cows while another farm might have the grass of 16 cows. ACOT advised farmers to intensify. Instead of where they might have one cow to three acres, ACOT turned it around the other way to have two or three cows to one acre.

That is what farmers did. They were given grants to do that and to improve marginal land. As well as getting the grants, farmers had to spend a lot of their own money and work very hard to try to bring the land around. That was as a result of the advice the received from officials of the Department - fellows with collars and ties. The farmers and the business community are paying for the likes of us inside here. Farmers, the self-employed and private companies are paying for public services and for the public administration of the country.

Farmers went along with that. Then, lo and behold, in the mid-1980s, fellows with good land were told they had to set so much of it aside and there was a satellite or a camera up in the sky looking down on them if they did not do that. This is the way farmers have been advised and, we will say, controlled because they are told to do these things. This country is already paying €480 million in carbon tax. Where is the carbon tax going? I believe it is going into social services because I do not see it doing anything to help the model that the climate change body or the global warming crowd are talking about.

In the Project Ireland 2040: National Development Plan document, it is stated that €22 billion is going to be directed towards dealing with climate change. Where is that money going to come from? Only from the poor fellow out in the morning milking his cows or the other fellow on the road with a lorry trying to transport food products or whatever. They are going to pay. We are already paying €500 million a year. They are going to double that to €1 billion a year for the next 22 years. That is where they are getting the €22 billion. I am very sure of it.

The people working will have to pay for that because there are no Mother Teresas. Mother Teresa died and there are no leprechauns. The money will have to be extracted out of the working people, the farmers and the business people. It is there the money is going to come from and nowhere else. We cannot get money to put a few extra beds in University Hospital Kerry in Tralee. There is going to be no massive injection of money. I cannot see it. We have no gold. We have no mines. I cannot see it coming from anywhere else so it is going to come out of the pockets of the poor working people. I think all this is fine if we could afford it. However we cannot afford this. It is a game. Look back to 2007. Everyone was told they had to buy diesel cars. Now we are being told-----