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

I wish the Minister of State well in his new role, which is very important. This debate, however, is the start of the knocking of, and the campaign against, people in rural Ireland. Early this morning on Newstalk, I had to defend people who want to build homes in rural areas because the Green Party has a policy whereby they will be asked to pay for the broadband they might receive in the future as a condition for the grant of planning permission by the local authority. This evening we are talking about more impositions being put on people in rural Ireland in particular.

With regard to energy security, there is a gaping hole in the fabric of our society because of the problems we will have with energy security in the future. There will be an over-reliance on energy from overseas, particularly in the post-Brexit era. Nobody knows what is coming down the road or what our relations with other countries will be in the future. Climate change, and what is proposed to deal with it, comes at an enormous cost. There is, again, an over-reliance on hitting the people who least deserve to be hit, the people living in rural Ireland.

This new Government has capitulated to the Green Party in dispensing with the proposed LNG terminal at Shannon. I was instrumental in ensuring that this project was promoted in the previous programme for Government. Not only is it not in the current programme, the Government is actively campaigning against it. Everybody must realise the enormous amount a private company spent on the Shannon LNG project. It did not have to be fracked gas. Nobody ever said it had to be fracked gas.

While we are talking about energy, we had a great supply of energy in our turf and in our peat industry. What is the Green Party doing in that regard? It is ending that industry and knocking it. I think back on all of the great people who worked in the midlands and around the country over the past 100 years, both harvesting and saving turf for themselves and working for the peat industry. We are now willing to flood, or rewet to use the polite term, the bogs. Such nonsense and baloney I have never heard in all of my life. It is the same as ending the beet industry. Every politician now rightly recognises that the beet industry in this country should never have been stopped. In the exact same way, the people of Ireland in the future will ask what was wrong with politicians when they shut down the peat industry. It is a stupid decision by stupid politicians who do not know what they are talking about. It is a horrible thing to do.

As I said, rural Ireland is being asked to pay a large price with regard to changing our "emissions profile". That term sounds great. It is lovely language but we must look at the cost and the imposition on people. Whether one lives in a town, a city or rural Ireland, one will be asked to pay a high price for this.

I compliment our farming community, the people who have genuinely been protecting our environment and who have been playing their part. They have improved their slurry storage facilities, built new sheds, put up new yards, and improved methods for spreading the slurry that must be spread every year. They have upped their game. They are playing their part as the custodians of our environment. They know a hell of a lot more about protecting our environment than any member of the Green Party ever will. I again compliment those people and the IFA, which has worked so diligently to defend our family farms.

The ending of exploration for oil and gas and the harnessing and harvesting of the great reserves we have around our coast was another stupid decision. Again, it does not make sense. Every other country in the world can go into its seas to look for gas and oil but we cannot because politicians think it is the wrong thing to do.

In my honest and humble opinion, the extra carbon taxes that are to come are unbelievable, unsustainable and unfair. Time will prove what I have said here this evening to be right. I thank the Acting Chairman for the opportunity to speak on this Bill.

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