Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome budget 2022. It is an important first step in many key areas, namely, health, housing, education, social protection and mental health. Budgets by their nature are incremental and, over the coming years, we will start to see the full impact of budget 2022. It will be seen for what it is, that being, a real budget for change and a budget for a better Ireland.

A key request for County Longford in the budget was a continued commitment to compensation for Longford County Council for the loss of €1.3 million in commercial rates arising from the closure of the ESB power station. I thank the Ministers, Deputies Darragh O'Brien, McGrath and Donohoe, for honouring this commitment.

Much has been made of the commitment to climate action in the budget. The commercial rates compensation reflects the Government's commitment to working with a community that has been adversely affected by the rapid decarbonisation of the midlands and the closure of our peat-powered power plants. On the other hand, commitments were given to the people of the midlands and we were assured we would not be forgotten and that and all the necessary measures to compensate the region, local services and economies would be put in place. Yesterday, though, we saw many families affected by the closure of commercial peat production protesting yet again outside the gates of Leinster House with the IFA. When I first sat on the then Committee on Agriculture and the Marine at the start of this Dáil, I was naive enough to believe think a solution to the blanket ban on peat harvesting was imminent. Unfortunately, it seems we are no closer to a solution and thousands of tonnes of peat are now being imported to sustain our beleaguered horticultural industry. We have missed a season of harvesting and all the soundings are that, while a solution might be in the offing, we look set to miss another.

Budget 2022 is an ambitious and laudable statement and the just transition is fine in theory, but at a practical level it simply is not working for the midlands. Groups are battling to draw down their funding and the ESB, arguably the biggest winner in the escalation of decarbonisation with the emergence of its new, slick and clearly very profitable business model, is simply not engaging with or supporting our local communities.

You could go as far as to say it is behaving disingenuously at this point. Through the midlands regional transition team, MRTT, we have asked for a meeting with ESB management to discuss issues with the community compensatory fund. The company has a fund of €1 million to divide between the two most impacted communities, that is, Lanesborough, County Longford and Shannonbridge, County Offaly. A request for this funding can be presented to the ESB board but only at such time as the ESB has developed new projects in each location. This means it is not a compensatory fund but a form of a dividend linked to a semi-State company that is on its way to transitioning successfully to a new activity. In other words, if it does not work for the ESB, the community gets nothing. This was never the proper interpretation of this funding and it breaks a precedent that was set with the closure of plants in Ferbane and Rhode where a compensation fund was provided to the local communities.

The ESB may argue it has already given €5 million to the just transition process but it knows it has an added responsibility to the two most impacted communities and it urgently needs to put in place funding and supports for Lanesborough in County Longford. To continue to leave that on the long finger is an affront to this community, one that has powered the generation of electricity in this country for the past 60 years. It is time for all agencies of the State to start singing from the same hymn sheet when it comes to climate action and just transition.

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