Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Tóibín.

I have been listening to what has been said. The first thing that comes to mind is the phrase “mining of turf”. I never heard that phrase before and wonder where it came from. The burning issue of the day is turf. What are we going to do about it? The proposal made by the Minister is that we stop the sale of turf. I live in the constituency of Galway East, where towns such as Tuam, Loughrea, Gort and Athenry have social housing. In the social houses are Stanley 8 ranges that heat the water and radiators and cook the food. If, tomorrow morning, the local authority were told it had to replace all the heating systems with heat pumps, how long would it take to do so, and at what cost? One would not find enough heat pumps in this country or maybe in the rest of Europe to do what needs to be done. If we believe we can do it in the next 12 months, we are actually in cloud cuckoo land. What we need to do is very simple. Let us be reasonable about it. We need to phase out the use of turf and smoky coal. We have dithered on it for a long time. However, I guarantee, as a person who has come from the construction industry, that if the Government wants to replace the Stanley 8 turf-burning cookers around this country, it will take ten years. One cannot bring in something to stop the sale of turf to the people who rely on it – those who buy the 100 yards and the spread and use the turf to heat their houses for the winter and do all that needs to be done with it. The problem is that we are not putting the plan in place. We are having a knee-jerk reaction by announcing something without a proper plan. Through the warmer homes scheme, for all it is doing, and despite the cost of oil, we are still putting in oil-fired boilers instead of heat pumps. This is being funded by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland right now, in 2022. It is madness.

We are going to have another fiasco like the one we had with the peat. We banned peat milling. We are now importing peat from elsewhere in Europe and causing more carbon dioxide emissions through the decision we made. There has been no planning. Really and truly, we need to proceed in a way that will work for people, the country and the environment. We have a certain amount of time to act, but bringing in a law to ban the sale of turf to neighbours, friends or family members is absolutely cuckoo and has to stop.

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