Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy Naughten said, the fund of €500 million over ten years is wholly inadequate. I am involved in a Tidy Towns committee. Most of us are involved in committees like that which do wonderful work. Different schemes are advertised by the county councils about renewables, water pumps and using innovative ideas. In one case at the moment, we have a tunnel. We had it up well before the Minister made his speech about window boxes on south-facing windows. We have an irrigation application in for some grant aid but they are totally oversubscribed. The Minister is only thinking at a surface level. A lot of people have great ideas and are interested. Why has some of the €3 billion or €4 billion that has been collected in carbon tax from rural dwellers not been used? It is like saying: "live, horse, and you will get grass".

The Minister said to Deputy Naughten earlier that if we do not pass this Bill today in this House, and the same tomorrow in the Seanad, we will lose €10 million. However, billions are already being collected off the people, and from rural people especially. Rural people have to travel to work and have no BusConnects. My colleague from Limerick, Deputy O'Donoghue, brought up the green bus one day. He has to travel about 80 km when he travels to get that bus. That is useless and that is how it is for everybody from the country who wants to use public transport. It is not there. Many train services and so on have been slashed because of Covid. Will they ever return? There is no joined-up thinking.

This fund is wholly inadequate. I agree with Deputy Naughten that we must penalise the polluters who are in the heavy oil business and make them pay. They are powerful corporations. Why is it always falling on the ordinary person who is trying to heat the house or the small farmer who is putting diesel in the tractor? Deputy Naughten quoted the figures about where people live in Ireland. We may want to be like other places in Europe but unfortunately we cannot be. All of the planning guidelines and Ireland 2040 are trying to herd people into the cities and denude rural Ireland but that is not the type of country we are. People are being browbeaten, literally terrorised and taxed endlessly while seeing no tangible results from it. It is great to have the dream and the ideals.

I appeal to the Minister as Green Party leader to call off the dogs regarding the objectors to the felling licences. Ordinary people have planted trees. Contractors have invested huge money to harvest those trees now they are mature and there are 80 or 90 objections to the felling licences by one serial objector. That is a scandal. These people were good enough to plant their land, which I am not in favour of. They took the decision to buy into the scheme and invested hugely in it, and now when it is ready for harvest the companies and contractors, who are being penalised with this tax as well, want to get to work but cannot do so. They are all parked up. They will go out of business because they cannot pay their loans. All of this because of objections to felling licences. We cannot have it every way. Certainly we want trees but we want to allow those trees to be thinned when they need to be and above all we need them to be harvested when they need to be.

We have to look at this again. The Minister said in his last response that he wants to help and enable ordinary farmers but that is not the way they feel. They do not feel they are being enabled or helped. They feel that they have been trying for decades to make small changes. They are the custodians of the land and have, in the main, done a damn good job of it. It is scheme after scheme after scheme and land is being rendered useless. It cannot be touched because of hen harriers and God knows how many other issues that have been brought in through legislation without proper consultation or engagement with the farmers.

There is no proper consultation or engagement with the communities about this fund. The €500 million is to be divided up over ten years between the communities and the private companies that will go looking for it. The big companies will have the expertise and will be able to hire consultants unlike the small, local groups such as Tidy Towns, biodiversity groups and small schools. Every drop of rainwater in our schools should be harvested, but it is not. We are using treated water. If there were enough money in this fund, schools could adapt. It would be a wonderful concept to educate the children in the three-classroom, four-classroom and five-classroom national schools with 100 pupils that all the water they use, except what they drink, could be collected by harvesting rainwater. That has been talked about for decades but it has not happened. This fund simply is not big enough, accessible enough or all-embracing enough to allow people to draw it down.

The Minister is not taking any of the amendments so he is not listening. It is like using a sledgehammer to crack a chestnut. If the Minister were to bring the people with him they would support him but he keeps throwing diktats at them, having protests, threatening them, demonising farmers and rural people and penalising them with carbon levies.

They see nothing back. Where is the almost €4 billion that has been collected already plus the €209 million from the PSO levy that I mentioned already? Where has that money gone? It has gone into black holes such as the children's hospital and elsewhere and not on projects that should be done.

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