Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to say a few words on these statements. The Taoiseach told the Dáil earlier and again yesterday that the Government could not do anything about the price of fertiliser when it was raised with him by Deputy Danny Healy-Rae. That conflicts directly with the evidence of the EU Commission representative given to the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine last week, as referred to by Deputy Collins. Of course we can. We blame Europe all the time, saying that we cannot do this or we cannot do that. We are the first country then to implement their punitive legislation and to add more statutory instruments to it. I hear Deputies such as Deputy Cahill and other backbenchers blaming everything on the Russians in respect of the crisis at the moment. We had a vote 15 months ago on the carbon tax. Some ten Deputies supported my vote on that and all of the parties voted for the tax. Now they are wringing their hands in saying that this is all to do with Russia. We will blame the man above next. A perfect storm has been created by the Government. It does not want people to live and it is trying to force people into penury, hunger, starvation and God knows what. We will not have a food supply.

I come from a mixed farm and we grew everything every kind of crop. These farms will not survive because they will not be profitable. There must be a small profit margin but it will not be there.

When I heard Deputy Leddin, a Green Party member, saying in committee that he was delighted that the price of fertiliser had gone up, I had to ask what type of thinking was that? What kind of respect is that from a man who lives in Limerick city but quite close to the country. This is the madness that is going on here for two years, supported by RTÉ and everybody else, about climate change. I am not a climate change denier but we are rushing and forcing people through all of these cuts to go electric but they perish when there are power cuts because they have no other form of heating. Now the Government wants to stop turf and coal burning and to take chimneys off houses. The lunatics are running the asylum here and it is time that someone called a halt to it. It is shameful the way Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are being dangled on a string by the Green Party and are being supported by some of the rural-based Independent Deputies in the Regional Group,on a daily basis. I do not know how they are going to face the people.

They have run amok and rushed to implement Green Party policies with no thinking being done. Our power plants must be closed down, coal burning must be stopped and we have nothing to replace it. A Deputy said earlier that it would take ten years before we have any energy from the sea. What will we have in the meantime? We will have penury, going around with bags on our back like the mná caoineacháin with shawls and begging and bringing a bag of leite on their backs. Is that it? The Government is driving people to despair and it has no shame in it where Europe and everybody else is blamed for everything. The Government then sits on its hands and does nothing. Someone said to me that the Government's hands will be shrivelled from the length of time that it is sitting on them because it is doing nothing about anything and is only penalising our people and our nation.

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