Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

One of the fundamental reasons that politics is widely discredited in the eyes of large numbers of people is because in almost every area, rather than listen to the people who work in particular sectors or industries - those who are passionate about things or the communities affected - and taking a lead from and involving them in making important decisions, we instead listen to a tiny number of people who just see these areas of endeavour or sectors as an opportunity to make money.

We always listen to the minority who see our planet and resources as an opportunity to make money and never listen to the people who care passionately about these things for themselves, to those who are affected directly or to those who work in these areas. At the bottom of most of the problems we face in this country and internationally is that folly of getting things completely the wrong way around and upside down in terms of how we deal with problems, set objectives and chart a way for our society. As Deputy Wallace alluded to, it is the reason we have economic crises which affect everybody, even that tiny minority who control all the wealth and have all the influence at government tables.

If one only listens to a tiny group of the wealthiest people and big business interests, one is guaranteed to get it wrong. What is good for a small minority, or what it thinks is good for it, runs counter to what is good for the rest of society, ultimately backfires even on them and leads us into the sort of catastrophic crises we are seeing. That is a generally true statement and there is no clearer example of how we are getting things wrong in that way than the issue of climate change. It is clear in the debate around the Bill and the response of the Government in dealing with the issue that it is engaged in a classic example of doing things completely the wrong way. People who care about these issues are asked for their views in submissions and 90% of them say we need binding targets. They submit that the issue is so serious that binding targets are required to deal with it. The matter gets to an Oireachtas committee and the views of the public, those who care, and the stakeholders are diluted. The committee says we cannot have binding targets as that is a bit extreme. Perhaps, it says, we can have a definition of low carbon so that at least we have some sort of roadmap to reducing carbon emissions and meeting international targets. It goes further up the line and all of that is ignored. The view of the 90% is ignored and the slightly watered down version of the Oireachtas committee is ignored. Instead, the Government listens to the big agriculture lobby. I stress that it is big agriculture. It sees binding targets as likely to infringe on its short-term - I stress "short-term" - view of making profit.

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