Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do not know if the Minister realises how helpless and useless he sounds when he says that the Government has no role in any of this because it is a private sector project. This is fracked gas from an area of North America that is suffering severely in terms of health and the environment. We have banned it in this country for those reasons, yet we are willing to facilitate its importation into this country. I repeat that we are facilitating it through our planning structure and the fact that the Government is allowing it to remain on a list of projects of common interest in Europe.

Gas and fracked gas is driving the spike in methane emissions. One third of this is coming from the industry in North America, from where fracked gas will arrive in Shannon. Businesses are looking for a market. If they succeed in building LNG here and across Europe, we can kiss goodbye to the Paris targets and any hope of limiting temperature rises to under 2°C. The science is there. Robert Howarth of Cornell University gave evidence at climate change committee meetings that if we could reduce methane emissions we could buy ourselves more time to try to deal with the climate catastrophe we are facing. Methane leaks at a significant level from fracked gas and traps heat at a much more intense level. Will the Minister listen to school students and do something about LNG?

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