Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

A very significant crisis faces ordinary people in regard to energy prices and the Government cannot say it has not been warned. We have warned it and it has been repeatedly raised in the media, yet the Government has done effectively nothing for anybody, except something completely inadequate for those who receive fuel allowance. For everybody else, the Government is saying, "Well, suck it up" - the additional €500, €600, €700, up to €1,000 for some people this winter - when people simply cannot afford to pay it. The consequence will be devastating. The answer, of course, as was outlined eloquently by my colleague, is not the kind of climate denialism that is at the core of this motion, namely, exploring further and digging up more gas, or keeping open fossil fuel power stations. There is no energy crisis on a dead planet and that is where those sorts of policies will lead us. Equally, the answer is not in the Government's countermotion, which promotes eco-austerity in the form of carbon taxes.

I have seen a point referenced in the media in a kind of offhand way. I think Pat Leahy mentioned it in an article a couple of weeks ago, when he wrote that everyone accepts carbon tax is an important part of addressing the climate crisis. That is not true. It is not what the evidence suggests. The international evidence, such as in a study of 26 jurisdictions that had introduced carbon taxes, shows that in order for carbon tax to have an effect, it would take 110 years. We do not have 110 years. There is a reason the main people who are pushing for carbon taxes are the fossil fuel corporations, big oil. They are doing that because they know it is not going to hit them where it hurts, which would be to say they have to leave fossil fuels in the ground, and they know it turns people off climate action because it presents climate action as something that will make people's lives more difficult as opposed to easier.

The real answer is what was contained in our previous motions. We must stop the expansion of data centres, a proposal that is strikingly absent from both the motion before us and its countermotion, which are projected to use 30% of our energy by the end of the decade. Attempting to shift to renewables while continuing to expand data centres is akin to attempting to walk down an escalator that is going up. Price controls, too, are absent from the motion. The Government has the power, and a ministerial order can introduce them and demand providers stop the extortionate prices for ordinary people. We should also renationalise the sector and use it both to guarantee decent jobs and services for communities and homes and as an instrument in a change in energy policy towards fully renewable energy.

I might make a point about fuel allowance. The Government made much of the paltry additional €5 per week announced in the budget, which was one third of what is necessary, but it announced at the same time that it would increase the means test threshold by €20. I have been working with a man who is just above the current means test threshold. When we heard the news the means test threshold was increasing, which was great, we contacted the Department, which told me the threshold was not being increased until January. When I asked the Taoiseach about it, he stated in the Dáil:

The Government decision was to implement the decisions with immediate effect on budget night. The two key decisions were the amount of €5 ... and the increase in the threshold [...] It could be an administrative issue.

I have reverted to the Department, which confirmed the man will not be able to access fuel allowance until January. Either the Taoiseach needs to correct the record of the Dáil if he misled it or, preferably, he can fix the decision. He should not accept circumstances whereby the man will need fuel allowance in January but somehow is supposed to scrape by in November and December.

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