John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is not matching the reality of life. This is the reality I face every day in my constituency. Let us consider farming and the suckler cow issue, an activity in which many families are involved. How do we have a just transition that moves that farming family from one activity to the other? There is no discussion about that. If we are building a new cheese plant in south Kilkenny and encouraging people to have the supply chain ready for that, how do we change them midstream? This is not a decision farmers made; it is a decision Government made. It decided that it wanted to increase the herd and that this was a good thing for the economy. How is the Government going to fund that just transition moving them from one activity to the other?

Peat and forestry were mentioned. We must be the laughing stock of Europe that we would stop producing peat and then start to import it. It is the same with timber. What is happening in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine that has caused such a horrific collapse in the process around licences of one kind and another with no real political response? The consequence of that is importing more timber from abroad and burning more diesel, with all that entails and the damage it does to the climate. What practical steps are being taken to rectify that for the world in which we live?

Beef farmers are being accused of all sorts of things, yet we are being asked to support them. They are being encouraged to expand. We have a large beef market abroad for the type of beef we produce. Are we telling them to stop? Where is the just transition there from one activity to the other?

In the transport business, a person cannot buy an electric truck unless he or she has a fantastic sum of money. They are not available and the servicing of those trucks is a complicated matter. If, therefore, we were to encourage people to buy the trucks, and if the money was within the transport sector, that cost is simply going to be passed on to the products and services that the truck and operator transport companies run up. The person at the end of the queue, therefore, is going to pay again. What is being done by Government to make sure there is a just transition for a transport company to become an electric transport company? Who is going to save the consumer in all of this? I am not against what we are talking about. I am against the fact that Government seems to think somebody else is going to pick up the tab for the agenda it has set and is now about to try to change dramatically.

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