Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State might have heard of the film "Saving Private Ryan". The new film will be about saving Ireland from the Minister, Deputy Ryan. In his opening statement, the Minister of State said the programme for Government states that climate change is the single greatest threat facing humanity. The single greatest threat in this country at the moment to people and their families is surviving because of what the Government is implementing.

We are going to go through the fuel prices as of 13 June. A gallon of fuel is €4.90 without tax. When the Government puts tax on it, that brings the price to €9.67. An average car requires ten gallons of fuel, which brings the cost to €96.80. If there were no taxes the cost would be €49. That is amazing. People are suffering at the moment. The first thing the Government should do is to protect the here and now, and then transition into the future for future generations. It has reversed the cycle to wipe out the here and now, where there might be no future.

I have a green agenda, which is to lower emissions in this country. The Minister, Deputy Ryan, has stated that 87% of people travelling in and out of this country come through Dublin Airport and travel throughout the country for cheap flights in cars and buses using fossil fuels. If traffic was dispersed around the country to other airports, we would reduce emissions. That is a green agenda.

Roughly 90% of roll-on, roll-off traffic comes through Dublin Port. A loaded truck travelling 100 km requires 56 l of fuel, plus AdBlue. Trucks are travelling from Dublin to Cork, Limerick, Galway and Clare. My job is to lower emissions. It is common sense. We have ports in Foynes, Cork and Rosslare, but the Government promotes Dublin. More fuel is burned with trucks travelling up and down the country to export and import goods. That is not a green agenda. Common sense tells us the dispersal of traffic is necessary. Shannon Foynes Port, which is waiting on investment, can take the largest ship in the world. That means we could get rid of 30 or 40 ships and instead use one, which would lower emissions.

In terms of natural resources in this country, I refer to oil exploration off the coast of Cork. We could be self-sufficient while waiting for green energy in the future. Instead, we bring oil from around the world, which uses emissions, into Ireland. We can lower emissions by extracting oil here. The Minister of State will ask me how that is possible given that it is a fossil fuel. It can be done very easily. If oil is extracted off the coast of Cork, we will not have to ship it halfway around the world. We are all under the same sky. I would get rid of the shipping costs of fuel being imported into Ireland from around the world. I would save the environment in the now until we have alternatives.

Some 70 wind turbines have been taken down in Galway at a time of crisis. What do we do? We open up Moneypoint and start burning fossil fuels again. The Government has an ideological perspective. I am in favour of wind farms and offshore energy, but they are not available in the here and now. My job and that of the Rural Independent Group is to protect the people now and work for the future. We do not see anything wrong with the agenda for a greener environment. We are here to protect the people now. The Government and the Minister, Deputy Ryan, are not doing that.

It was stated on social media during the week that the Minister, Deputy Ryan, does not tell lies. He does. He told us that we were getting rid of the 1 cent levy to fund the National Oil Reserves Agency, NORA. Some 380 million l of fuel-----

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