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

This Bill, if it is implemented in its current form, will adversely affect every man, woman and child in rural Ireland. Carbon charge increases will affect people going to work and will cost them more. Farmers' incomes will be reduced as they will have to reduce their herds and pay more carbon tax on diesel. Ordinary, honest people will have to pay more to heat their homes, and they are being told they cannot burn turf or timber. They are being told they must insulate their homes and put in heat pumps and air-to-water systems that are very costly. Where will ordinary working people get the money required? It can be up to €40,000 to do these kinds of jobs. I am referring to poor people who are not working and people on small incomes who are struggling as it is. Already, the waiting period for a deep retrofit, for those who qualify, is more than 18 months and can even be two years. We should remember it is only people on the fuel allowance who will qualify for it.

The tourism sector, which is vital to Kerry, will be financially burdened by the carbon tax changes and by the implications of the utterances of the Minister, Deputy Ryan, who has said air travel charges will have to be increased. This will prevent visitors from coming to Ireland. Although most hauliers are now going along with the new Euro 6 diesel engine, they have to pay more carbon charges. The Minister does not understand this.

By 2030, farmers will have to reduce their herds by 51%. I have heard Fianna Fáil Deputies contradicting that and saying we were scaremongering. We are not scaremongering; we are telling the truth, and that is truth about it. Teagasc, formerly ACOT, has advised farmers for the past 40 years to increase their herds. In 2013, the former Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Coveney, told dairy farmers to increase their herds and that milk was the new white gold. He told us the Chinese would drink it. I think they do not like it at all now. Now the Government in which Deputy Coveney is still a Minister is telling us to cut production by more than 50% by 2030.

The Minister stated that farmers who do their best to cut down on carbon emissions and have hedges and ground that sequester carbon will be accounted for, but it will take seven years to measure that. In the meantime, notwithstanding that, all the farmers who do not produce any CO2 and those who sequester more CO2 than they produce will, after the Bill is enacted, pay more in carbon tax. Where were the discussions with the farming organisations such as the IFA, Beef Plan Movement and ICMSA? There have been none. While there is an advisory council and there have been meetings of the climate action committee, their memberships are all restricted. The people who know what they are doing were not allowed in, and that is what the Government is at.

Farmers have made great strides to improve their farms environmentally over recent years, complying with the nitrates directive and storing and spreading slurry safely and properly, with low emissions, vacuum tankers, trailing shoes, dribble bars and all the rest. The Chinese and other Asians are building more coal-burning power stations to produce electricity. Africa, India, China and other Asian countries can use ordinary, reliable diesel engines in machinery, while we have to use the Euro 6 engine. We have to use AdBlue, which is troublesome. The Chinese are building coal-burning stations and we are closing our turf-burning peat stations in Bord na Móna.

In normal times, outside of the pandemic, at any one time there are 7,000 aeroplanes in the sky. Are they going to be operated by electric batteries? Where will they be plugged in in the sky? How long will it take to charge these aeroplanes? The farmer, however, will have to get an electric tractor to spread slurry by 2027. Where are the Fianna Fáil Deputies who said that is not in the Bill? It certainly is. The Government need not try to cod the people because it will not get away with it. There will be nothing for the good tractors that farmers have but to send them to Hammond Lane for scrap. That is where they will end up. After all the efforts of the Minister, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in respect of the Bill, by how much will they reduce the global temperature? What mathematical modules is the Government using? It is scaremongering. This is just another tax. The Minister must know that the global temperature has reduced by less than 1% since 1850. That is a fact. If we all left this country, closed the doors and turned off all the lights, it would reduce global emissions by only 0.13%, and that is a fact.

There are new rules for the Order of Business, but since the Minister, Deputy Ryan, is the one involved in the Bill, I ask him where the funding is for the local improvement schemes for rural Ireland and Kerry. Where is the funding to install a proper water supply to operate in mid-Kerry, around Beaufort? It breaks down every day and people have no water. That is essential but the Government is not considering those issues. The Government, headed by the Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, has done enough harm. It closed Bord na Móna - no more moss peat, no briquettes. While it is true we can import them, that costs money and carbon is emitted in doing so. Does the Government realise that? Is it awake or what is wrong with it? We are leaving 10,000 acres of bog behind us in Littleton, County Tipperary. We did not have gold or diamonds to start with and we do not have oil. If we did, we would not be allowed to use it.

I return to the suggestion that the Minister of the day will be able to bring forward a carbon budget, whether the House supports it or not. That is undemocratic. There is much talk about Putin at present, but he is nowhere near as bad as this - not a hope in the world. He would not be at the races with the gang we have here. What a stunt, whereby the Minister thinks he can push through a budget without giving the House any say. Will he stand up and tell us that is democratic? It is not, and he will not get away with it.

If the Minister, Deputy Ryan, does get away with it for the time being, he will not do so when he next goes to the doors. It is undemocratic, and the men and women of 1916, 1921 and 1922 fought for democracy in this country, and he is trying to shut it down. He will probably try it, given the new voting arrangements and the way that the coalition parties are tied together at the hip. Fianna Fáil, just to stay in power, is backing the Bill and the Minister. Perhaps they will get away with it for the time being, but each and every member of the Government will regret it and get it back on the doors because that is what they deserve for trying to blackguard the people, the ordinary good honest people who are trying hard to survive. The Government is trying to drive them down to the ground but it will not get away with it, and I hope it does not. The Minister might get away with it temporarily but he will have to face the people, and that is democracy. He will get his answer for sure, and I promise him that.

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