Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The earth is not dying; it is being killed. The people who are killing it have names and addresses. My neighbours and constituents will do their bit and I urge them to do a bit more. However, it is not their names and addresses that folk singer, Utah Phillips, was referring to; it is the names and addresses of big oil, big gas, etc., and the big banks that finance them. The Taoiseach talked about chaos. They are people who are threatening the world with climate chaos.

The World Economic Forum, a conservative body, has just published a report in support of a polluter tax on big business carbon polluters. It states that such a tax, set at $75 per tonne for higher-income countries and then graduated down, could reduce carbon emissions by 12%. Will the Taoiseach support the introduction of a polluter tax on big business? I would, but I would go further.

You not control what you do not own. Global corporations must be taken out of the hands of the profiteers and placed into the hands of society, with dirty industry shut down, massive retraining and reskilling and alternative, well-paid jobs in the green energy sector - a world for people and the environment, not a world for profit, which is the system that the Taoiseach defends.

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