Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This week, Greta Thunberg slammed politicians for empty words on climate change. I wonder if this was a response to some of the recent comments the Minister has made. The Minister and the Government have put the burden on ordinary people and have made it clear that they will have to make cuts this winter, that we might have power outages and that heating and electricity costs will continue to rise out of control. Basically, people will go cold this winter. The Government is asking people to choose between dinner and heating, between going to bed hungry or cold, or even going to bed at all because of this Government's housing policy.

These are decisions people are being forced to make because of the Government's policies and priorities. There has been no talk about how things will be tight for large corporations or data centres. There has been no talk about tightening the belts of energy-sucking, profit-driven large corporations or data centres. What is the Minister doing about this? He is telling people to wear an extra jumper and to prepare for a winter without heating. Is this the Government's response to climate change? We have the Minister responsible for climate action and the Tánaiste unable to give a commitment that there will be no outages in energy supply this winter. This is a shocking indictment. In some ways, I can feel some sympathy for the Minister because this goes back to a lack of planning by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael over the past ten years, and now the Minister has been landed with this problem.

There is so much more I want to say on climate change but I am limited in my speaking time. We need to save the planet. This Government is putting forward policies and priorities that will not be delivered for years, and it could be too late.

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