Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is in everybody's interest that the environment we live in is sustainable and that we can cohabitate with the natural world and the animal world. That is in all our interests given the damage done to, and the potential damage that will be inflicted on, this planet.

We have come across environmental and social issues in the last seven or eight years where young people have engaged. I would compare what is going on now with the civil rights movement in the 1960s. People are at the cutting edge. People demand radical change. They will ask if the governments in situ, including in Ireland, are in favour of radical change. There is a question about whether this plan and other plans will challenge the environmental vandalism that has happened to the planet.

This plan has flaws. A number of flaws relate to private companies involved in the plan and to the over-reliance on personal responsibility with regard to environmental issues. There is no mention of free public transport. There is an idea about 1 million electric cars. When I heard that first, I thought it was a joke. We want to get away from car culture and congestion. People want to use public transport. This has to be looked at collectively rather than individually. If it is looked at individually, it will be doomed to failure. It is costly for people in this State to get their homes retrofitted. There has to be a State company that will facilitate retrofitting people's homes at cost prices. There is also the issue of offshore renewable energy. ESB is one company that is involved. It has existed for 90 years. That has to be looked at with regard to offshore energy.

An elephant in the room is the matter of data centres. If the projections are correct, data centres will use an enormous amount of electricity. It is incredible. There are no mitigating circumstances regarding how much they will use and the damage that they will do now and in the future. There are flaws in this plan. As I said from the start, we all want a better environment, but we have to look at the flaws of this plan and of other plans from other Governments across the world.

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