Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Paris, Madrid, Athens and Mexico have announced that they will ban diesel vehicles in their cities by 2025. We will fall even further behind those cities. Even if we convert to electric vehicles and trains, if the electricity that powers them is dirty and comes from peat, oil, coal and gas as it does at present, we will still have a problem. The burning of coal at Moneypoint will still be happening in 2025 and probably in 2030. We will have coal-powered buses, which is worse than them being diesel-powered. Scotland has increased its power generation from renewable sources from 20% in 2009 to 43% in 2015. In Ireland, in 2015, 8% of our energy was from renewable sources. We seem to be letting the private sector lead us on renewable energy. It is like expecting it to fix the housing crisis. It just will not happen. Unless the State takes a proactive role and gets serious and honest about dealing with climate change, we are not going to change things very quickly. Our record on climate change in Europe is going to get worse before it gets better.

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