Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

People cannot live their lives at the moment. People in the Third World cannot live their lives at the moment. People in this country are finding it very difficult to live their lives at the moment with the cost of living and the systems in place for climate change.

To my mind, the vote last night did not reflect the debate that happened on carbon budgets. I am fundamentally putting to the Tánaiste that we need that transformational change. It is not me saying it but the UN Secretary General. That means tackling the massive profits of these energy companies, and tackling the wealth of that 1% of the richest people. It means tackling the dividends giving out to shareholders with governments intervening to take that money from their pockets and putting it into carbon change. We know people on low to middle incomes will not be able to afford the €25,000 for retrofitting. Therefore, those people are paying for the wealthy to get retrofitting and not them. We know that retrofitting is one of the key factors that could change people's lives as regards carbon emissions.

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