Dáil debates

Wednesday, 3 November 2021

Finance Bill 2021: Second Stage (Resumed)

 

7:12 pm

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

There is no doubt about it; this is a deeply anti-rural budget that will do nothing to support the rural economy of the family farm. Costs for those operating family farms or living in the countryside will be substantially increased. With blatantly voiced discrimination, the budget of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens, whacks consumers, motorists and homeowners through regressive carbon tax hikes, while rewarding banks with massive tax cuts.

I appreciate very much the extension of the help-to-buy scheme. The continuation of the scheme is most welcome. However, there are several other issues that I am very concerned about, for example, the cutting of the roads budget by €88 million. I will talk about County Kerry and local improvement schemes. There are 676 schemes still on the list. We got through 20 this year and 11 last year. That is a total of 31 delivered over two years. There will be no account of any one of us if we keep going that way with 20 schemes being delivered a year. I remember, in times gone by, when 111 schemes were delivered in one year after the other for two years. We are being let down. I have said it several times before that the people of Kerry and those living on those roads are entitled to a good road to their doors, just the same as the people in Dublin 4.

The carbon tax is wrong. Going back, the Government promised us that there would be a scheme for solar panels and for farm solar panels to boost energy and create electricity. I know of a farmer, who was on television this evening, who has created enough power using the solar panels on his shed alone to cover his own electricity. He could supply much more of it to the grid, but there is no facility for him to do so. That facility for solar panels was supposed to be put in place by 2020. Now we are being told that it will not be introduced until 2030. What the Government is doing is penalising the farmer. The farmer is driven mad at the same time. The Government is hurting everyone else as well, including hauliers. Members of the Government should remember that there is a carbon footprint for bringing electricity along long distances. That is what happening now. However, the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications would rather try to reduce the national herd, paralyse the haulage industry, and target farmers, people going to work and the transport and taxi industries.

The way we are going, older people and many others may be perishing in their homes before the winter is over because they will not be able to pay for the electricity, fuel, oil or paraffin that they use. There have been amber lights flashing all year long telling us that we may run out of electricity. We know about the cost of it, which is bad enough. What is the Government doing about it? The Taoiseach and his gang were all over in Glasgow at COP26 this week. The Taoiseach promised that he would give €200 million this year, and every year for ten years, to address the causes of climate change. Did he tell the Minister he was doing that? Are the Taoiseach and the Minister working together or what is happening? It is very serious. The Government is collecting carbon tax with one hand, and giving away with the other to these fellas to keep these so-called scientists and whomever, flying from country to country. We do not know what they dropping on us from the aeroplanes when they are doing that. The Government is still doing all of this in the name of climate change.

The members of Government would very much want to cop on. Are we dealing with the biggest crowd of lunatics ever to run the country? When we see, on the one hand, the collection of the carbon tax and the torture they are putting people through, it is the best country in the world if it will keep going. We see the state of our hospitals, our farmers and our workers trying to go to work. No felling licences have been granted to applicants for more than three years. I know of one fella and it was seven years before he got his licence the other day. Hauliers and the transport industry are being affected. The Government tells us that it has closed down Bord na Móna. We know that. It closed one third of Moneypoint and put nothing in to replace it. It is no wonder the amber lights are flashing. The Government is opposing Shannon LNG and is telling fellas to buy electric cars. Where are they going to plug them in? Where are they going to get the electricity? Will the electricity be there when they plug them in? It is very likely that there will not be electricity to charge them.

I ask the Minister to cop on and to deal with the basics. To give and flit away €200 million of the people's money this week, which was collected in the name of carbon tax and other taxes, is very wrong. The Government is putting pressure on the people of Ireland, and especially farmers, hauliers and the transport industry. It is very wrong to do that to those people. I cannot say that I condone it, and I never will. I will never condone something like that, namely putting ordinary, good, hard-working people through what the Government is putting them through in the name of climate change. I tell the Minister one thing, if he is there for the next saecula saeculorum, it will not change the weather. Whatever comes down and will come down. He will not stop it.

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