Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I say to Deputy Eamon Ryan that he will have to change, because I do not agree with all the talk of climate change. There have been patterns of climate change going back over the years before there was ever a combustible engine working in this or any other country. If we go back to the 11th and 12th centuries, this country was roasted out of it, and in the 15th and 16th centuries we were drowned out of it. In the 1740s we had a famine in which we lost more than 3 million people because of two years of bad weather. The records will prove that to Deputy Eamon Ryan. At the time of the famine we did not have any combustible engine or anything like it. Deputy Ryan referred to cattle and suckler cows. There was not a fraction of the number of cows in Ireland at that time that there are now. Patterns of climate change took place and mankind had no hand, act or part in it. It was just something that happened. If one goes further back, the country was covered in ice during the Ice Age, and if one then goes forward to the 1860s and 1880s, this country was drowned out of it. In one particular year the sun did not shine at all, and there were not yet any combustible engines in the country.

We are being asked to pay a carbon tax that is costing all sectors of the community massive sums of money. It is hurting the young fellow going to work in the morning. It is hurting the fellow with a lorry on the road. It is hurting those with tractors on farms. The question is where the money being collected in carbon tax is going. One place it did not go last Christmas was to pay for home help for the elderly and invalids who were refused home help for Christmas Day, St. Stephen’s Day and New Year’s Day. It did not go to them, anyway, and the question is where is it going. We are collecting so much of it that someone has to answer for it or be accountable for it. The carers who sought it for elderly people did not get it until those whom they were supposed to mind had died.

I believe God above is in charge of the weather and that we here cannot do anything about it. The previous Government did not do what it was supposed to do, not to mind attempting to regulate or rectify the weather. One Minister suggested we should put €3.5 million aside to improve weather forecasting, but that will not change the weather.

It has been said that climate change is the cause of flooding in the country, but the flooding is due to the fact that rivers have not been cleaned out. The Flesk river in Killarney and Glenflesk was cleaned out 35 years ago and it was grand for about 20 years. Now it is in a desperate state again, but the view is that now climate change is the cause of flooding and we cannot get funding to clean rivers. If we even got a small part of the €3.5 million - around €200,000 - the river would be cleaned and there would be no more talk of flooding in Glenflesk. The River Shannon was not cleaned out since the English last cleaned it out. Perhaps if that river were cleaned there would not be half the flooding or the need for funding to be set aside to deal with flooding. We must deal with the root of the problem. The rivers are silted up. They are blocked with trees and every other kind of obstruction. We must start there and not get carried away with the notion of addressing climate change by hoping to change the weather. That is my view on climate change. We are only a small country in this part of the hemisphere. The other larger countries and continents must play a role. We should play a proportionate part with regard to our size because, listening to what has been said, one would conclude that we are being overcharged and over-regulated in this regard. The big question is where the money that is being collected in carbon tax is being spent, because I do not think it is having any effect in changing the weather.

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