Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will keep to my time as I must head back to west Cork afterwards. This Bill amounts to nothing more than tokenism. It is much too little and is way too late. It will have little to no impact.

I and my colleagues in the Rural Independent Group have been calling on the Government to act on crippling energy price hikes for more than a year. Earlier this week the Central Bank announced that it is now forecasting that inflation will surge again this year. It went on to single out energy prices as the main cause. The remarks of the Governor of the Central Bank, Mr. Gabriel Makhlouf, are even more worrying. He described the surge in costs here as "spectacular". The Government cannot conveniently ignore this research, as the Central Bank analysis clearly shows that those living in lower-income households will be disproportionately affected and will feel the pinch more this year. Overall, the spectacular cost-of-living increases we are experiencing in Ireland mean that an average family will be forced to pay an extra €3,000 to €5,000 to run their household this year.

Despite this crisis, all the Government can do is offer a €100 electricity voucher. Not only is this grossly insufficient, it is also an insult. It clearly underlines how out of touch this Administration is with the realities facing families across the country. The truth of the matter is that people cannot afford to heat their homes. That is the bottom line. The price of home heating oil has shot through the roof, as has the price of coal and imported peat briquettes. The Green Party would like us all to wrap ourselves in silver wrap. It sounds mad, and it is, but that is what is happening in homes around Ireland. People cannot afford to heat their homes in 2022. They cannot afford to put fuel in their cars. Again, I am aware that the Green Party would like us all to cycle to work or use public transport. However, in my constituency of Cork South-West people cannot cycle on the roads as there are no cycleways. Even if there were, the hedges and ditches are spilling out onto the roads, making it impossible to cycle on many of them.

We do not have public transport. In my area of Goleen, the bus leaves at 7.30 in the morning and that is it. It returns in the evening at approximately 6 p.m. That is some public transport system to be proud of, and I will talk about that later. It is not like in Dublin, where beautiful electric buses were purchased recently. However, there is a great plan to reintroduce the train to west Cork. It was announced in the past week. There was a train route to Schull in the late 1800s. Today, we cannot get a train into west Cork because it only goes as far as Cork city. This is a fantastic plan but, as with all plans that require money to be put into west Cork, I am sure it will be abandoned and shelved quite quickly by this Government, which has its mind set on using the finances of the State to keep building and pumping money into the capital.

In 2017, I pleaded with the then Government to consider bringing light rail to Bandon. The proposal would actually take it back to where there was a rail line previously, down to Skibbereen, Bantry and the like. That is the recent proposal. Surely it could have been examined at that time and the Government could have considered taking light rail there to at least open west Cork as a place of business. A couple of years later, I put another proposal to the Government to establish a park-and-ride system to take cars off the roads. The idea was to have a base in Clonakilty or Skibbereen where people could park their cars and buses running continuously would take them to the city and home again in the evening. Everybody told me it was a great idea, but it was shelved straightaway because it was west Cork and it needed a little investment and a little time.

The sad thing is that then somebody did capture that great idea. West Cork Connect, Damien Long's bus service, is a private operator. He is running a service to Cork several times a day from Skibbereen and Bantry, taking in Clonakilty, Bandon, Dunmanway and Ballineen.

He is basically a private operator. I am not here to promote any private operator but he is the only one doing it. Bus Éireann cannot provide this service. He wants to run a new service from Goleen every hour on the hour. The Department will not allow him to do so. He is not asking for money; he is asking for a licence so that he can give people an alternative to using their private vehicles and get those vehicles off the road. For the life of me, I cannot understand why the Department has not sat him down at a table, told him it is a great idea that will save the State thousands or millions of euro and agreed to work to give him some bit of a subvention to allow him to continue. It will not do so. We are trying to find a way forward so that people do not have to use their cars. I refer to the cost of using a car, as well as the other bills people have coming into their homes. This is a fabulous idea. It would be a service every hour on the hour from Skibbereen and Goleen in west Cork. If we cannot see that it is a workable plan that would not cost the State anything, then there is something seriously wrong with the way we are doing business in here.

I refer to the carbon tax. I do not know why a lot of the Deputies from Opposition parties are shouting. Sure they all voted for the carbon tax. What did they think would happen? Did they think they were going to get a Christmas present from the people of Ireland? They took money out of people's pockets. That is what they did by voting for it. They blindly supported the carbon tax. What do we find out now? The Government is buying beautiful fancy electric buses above in Dublin with the money. Rural Ireland is being punished with the carbon tax. I have said often enough that we cannot carry Dublin on our back; we can only look after ourselves to the best of our ability. The money from the carbon tax is being pushed into pet projects to get them across the line.

We do not have a proper road network in west Cork. We have shocking public transport. I will not even mention trains; they do not exist in west Cork. I have every right to stand here and be angry. There is a new plan out there for a public transport service out of west Cork but it is looking for submissions and it is hoped to have it up and running in five years or so. This is what has been going on recently. There have been announcements in respect of west Cork every day of the week for the past two or three months but they are all kicking the can down the road and promising it will happen in five or ten years' time. There is nothing happening on the ground now. We want shovels turning now on projects so that we can deliver for the people of west Cork.

There will be announcements next week in respect of the warmer homes scheme. Any announcement on that must be welcomed because I have had people come back to my constituency office who think I codded them. I filled out forms for them for the warmer homes scheme two years ago. They were eligible for it at that stage. Now they have come back to my office two years later because they still have not got it and to ask me why I promoted it. We had a fabulous scheme in Bantry several years ago that insulated the homes of the elderly. The roofs and whatever else were insulated. We were able to get into every home and get it sorted within our community. Mother of God, we now are in a situation where the Government cannot deliver on a warmer homes project. Basically, people have to stay at home and cover themselves in a bit of silver wrap and plenty of blankets because they cannot fill the fuel tank since the Government made sure to put home heating oil out of their price range but it will not deliver on the warmer homes scheme. Is it going to have another fancy announcement next week with glossy magazines and praise and everyone patting themselves on the back? I will wait and see if there is delivery. Surely to God, if a person fills out an application form and sends it away, then a date should be scheduled within two or three months for when work should commence. That is the real world we should be living in. Unfortunately, we are living in some la-la land. The Government makes continuous announcements but there is nothing happening on the ground. There is no delivery.

Fuel allowance is an issue. I know loads of people who fall between the cracks and cannot qualify for fuel allowance. It is terribly unfortunate for them. They are in very difficult financial positions and that has to be looked at further. A person who wants to avail of a warmer homes project could be €10 over the weekly income limit. It is terrible to think that person would be omitted because as a result, in spite of his or her home desperately needing to be insulated or to have whatever other work done. I am not taking away from the fabulous work that is done under the warmer homes scheme. I know Finbarr O'Sullivan, Con O'Sullivan and others are doing some fabulous work in west Cork. I am not taking away from the work that needs to be done but it needs to be delivered quickly. There are families that are suffering severely at the moment. The finances are not there.

I refer to wind and solar energy. The Minister of State talked about wind energy and that is fine. Wind energy is the future, but it should have been the future the last time the Green Party was in government. All this should have been put in place and should be standing there now. I know what is going to happen. The Government will put it in place and tell us we will feed Europe and then it will do the same as it did with fishermen's rights - it will sell them all and give them to the rest of Europe and we will end up with no profit and probably little of the wind energy delivery on this side of the world.

I was speaking to a person today who was able to buy fuel for his or her bus two years ago at €1.08. It is now costs €1.65. The person will not be able to provide a bus service if this continues. Two years ago, AdBlue cost €440 for 1,000 l but now it costs €750.

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