Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Is this a green budget? The quantum leap we need to make to decarbonise our economy and society requires a strength of purpose which comes from a genuine belief that we have a genuine duty to halt global warming. It will never come from a political marriage of convenience where the senior partner went for tax raising on green issues rather than trying to genuinely change people's behaviour. A couple of green Ministers do not a green Government make. The buck stops with the budget. The Ministers for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputies Gormley and Ryan, can lobby all they want but Fianna Fáil will never let them near the purse strings of the Department of Finance or, in other words, real power. We saw that today. My summary of this green budget is that it has a light sprinkling of parsley, although I do not know whether they will go for the sprouts.

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