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

Of course the sequestering of carbon will have to be counted. My worry from the outset was that farmers would not be allowed the carbon they sequestered. I contend that many farmers are sequestering more carbon than they are producing. I worry that the calculations are supposed to take seven years to account for what farmers are sequestering and how efficient they are. Many farmers are very efficient and have gone to extremes and much expense so that they would not be damaging the environment. That has to be recognised. The scientist who claimed more than 15 years ago that cattle were producing so much methane and were damaging the environment has now admitted that his calculations were two thirds wrong. Imagine that after all the racket about methane gas. He admitted it late last year. That is very serious. I cannot think of his name. We contend that even farmers who are in dairy, given the amount of grass they grow, should get credit for the carbon they are sequestering.

We hear about climate justice and see what is happening. We know the cost of diesel and petrol has gone up by so much recently but so is percentage the Government is getting from the carbon tax. People in rural Ireland have to use petrol and diesel because they have to get from A to B; they have to get to work and do their harvesting with tractors or whatever. Diesel has gone up 50% from last year. The Minister was absolutely delighted today. He purchased three new buses at the cost of €800,000 a piece. They will be more costly to run than any bus. Good friends have told me that hydrogen will cost €20 per kg and it will take 27 kg to do 430 km. That is more than €500. I look around this city day after day at big, tall and long double-decker buses and there is no more than one or two people in them at any time and yet the people in rural Ireland are penalised and must pay for these brand-new shiny buses that are not even economical. It is wrong. There is no justice in that for the people who are out early in the morning in the dark, the cold and the wet, travelling long distances to work, because that is what they have to do, whereas in this city there are so many buses pulling up on Kildare Street and so many have one or two people on them. This is not climate justice.

We have to ensure that biodigesters and the methane they produce can be used to produce energy. One farmer was recently refused planning permission for a biodigester. This is the country we are in. Farmers are trying to do their best and people are complaining that farmers are not being penalised enough but they are. The Minister must realise that and do something to make sure farmers are properly compensated for the carbon emissions they are sequestering.

A farmers' group raised the issue that farmers should be compensated for forestry that they have grown. Lo and behold, the Department officials said "Sure we gave you premiums for that". That premium was only a help. The premiums are all cut now and people cannot get licences to fell the tress that they were told to grow, and now the Department will not allow them to claim for sequestering carbon in these forests. The Minister is very unfair if this is the route he wants to take with people who planted these forests, not allowing them to cut them down.

There was a grand group of people outside today, honest, hard-working people. Then there are the two Ministers telling them they are doing their best for them. They have done nothing at all for them since the Government got into power 12 months ago.

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