Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

The Greens have always worn the clothes of a parliamentary party that is democratic and wants to work with everybody to achieve objectives.

That pretence has been shed significantly today in what has happened.We have a situation where every single Opposition amendment has been refused. A good Dáil will work when legislation is rigorously tested and when the wisdom, knowledge, experience or influence of half the representatives of the people of Ireland are at least listened to, or they have some input. The Green Party has opted to refuse all of that today and this is a significant change to the way the Green Party has done business. It will also significantly change how people feel the Green Party has worked.

I listened to the response and I go back to the issue of trust. We have heard Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party talk about what they will do for farmers. As I understand it today, there is not one, single, microgeneration project that is actually feeding into the national grid at the moment. After all the talk, all the debate and all the issues we discussed ad nauseamin this House, not one piece of electricity is coming from microgeneration from a farmer or from a person locally. Anaerobic digestion, small-scale wind or small-scale solar projects that could put money back in the pockets of farmers are still not there at all.

Consider a country such as Denmark. When it wanted to rebalance the lopsided development that was happening there, they went ahead and built a new city called Aarhus. They put significant infrastructure and significant investment into an area outside Copenhagen to rebalance that country. This is what is needed here. An ambition like that would build trust back up with the people of Ireland.

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