Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This oil Bill has already raised €3 billion in carbon taxes since 2010. The Green Party has included certain projects that its members want rural Ireland to pay for. Some €8.5 million is being provided for gas projects. Dublin City Council is to get €20 million for green heating systems. Some €4.5 million is being provided for the Tallaght district system, €7.5 million is being provided for local street lights and €1.4 million is being provided to improve the efficiency of heavy goods vehicles. Do Green Party members understand what happens in rural Ireland? Do they understand how food products get onto the shelves? It will be their fault when people are charged between €3 and €4 for a litre of milk because they are taxing rural Ireland, the same people who are feeding them every single day. All the food for people, whether they are vegan or otherwise, comes from rural Ireland, but the Green Party is taxing us.

Every new truck at the moment costs approximately €150,000. That is the minimum cost. A trailer for a truck costs approximately €90,000. What does the Green Party do? It gets everything into Dublin and lets rural Ireland pay for it. The Green Party has no concept of rural Ireland. I look at it from the point of view of all of its ministerial appointees. They are Dublin-based. The Minister of State should come down to Limerick for a full day and I will show him what is needed to get food onto the table in rural Ireland. All the bus infrastructure to schools is bust. Deputy Danny Healy-Rae mentioned an issue a moment ago. I am in the construction industry. The Green Party now wants every construction job to have an electric digger which gives two hours working time and needs to be charged by a generator for eight hours. Again, the Green Party members do not have anything between their ears because they have no experience of rural Ireland. They have no experience of how real life works. There is no infrastructure in rural Ireland, so we have to travel.

Farmers work 365 days a year, and 366 days in a leap year, to provide for the people in Ireland. All the Green Party can do is tax them and send all the funding into Dublin. The funding needs to come down the country. The Government has raised enough taxes. Why not incentivise farmers to produce a greener product? I know farmers who have been working for generations waiting for the next generation to take over farms, but they cannot do it because every time there is a change of Government it takes a full generation to get the next generation started. It should only take two generations to set up a family to go forward and to rebuild. Farming cannot rebuild with the amount of taxes the Government is putting on it. The Government must incentivise farmers and help them. They are helping the Government by paying €40 a tonne extra for fertiliser to help with emissions. What does the Government do? It puts on more tax to get the milk into the co-ops and it charges farmers more to go to shops to get their own food. When farming goes well, the community goes well. Every town and village has been closed down and no infrastructure has been put in place because the Government is moving all the funding to Dublin.

When the Minister of State goes home this evening he can think about it. When he sits down to have a cup of tea he will want a small drop of milk. He will bring out the butter and the bread and everything else. He will think about where that comes from. Farmers are working 365 days a year, yet all the Green Party wants to do is tax them more for its greener way. The Minister of State should come down to Limerick and cycle 15 or 20 miles to get his litre of milk. It is great to cycle into the Dáil and look good but the Minister of State should come down to Limerick and he can cycle every day if that is the way he wants to do it, but he will go nowhere and there will be no television to show the Government up for what it is doing. I congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, on the position he is in, but if he wants to be educated, he should come down to Limerick for a day and I will educate him about real living and real life.

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