Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is not agreed. Through the Chair, I honestly believe that we need to have a major rethink of this legislation because it will have profound impacts on all aspects of our lives, especially in rural Ireland, and on jobs all over our country. The very fabric of the essence of the survival of the farming sector and many rural economies is going to be an undermined with this legislation. It is rushed and ill-conceived, and it looks grand and dandy and is nice to pander to the public and to our friends in Europe and elsewhere, but reality has been left aside. There is no real understanding or assessment as to an impact of this on every man, woman and child. We have figures, independently verified, that it is going to add almost €90 in costs for every man, woman and child in the country. Those costs are coming in the middle of a pandemic and we do not know the impact that it will have, yet the Minister is rushing to enact the legislation. We see a scarcity of materials every day of the week which we cannot obtain. Raw materials that were being harvested are being denied, like turf and many other issues. Insulation and so on cannot be got. No thought has been put into this. Insulation has to be imported. What about the carbon footprint and the cost of importing? This is farcical in the extreme and we are opposed to this legislation going forward.

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