Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend the work of my colleagues, an Teachta O’Rourke and Senator Boylan. They have consistently put forward solutions that will work and have been consistently constructive in the face of a Government that is becoming more out of touch with every day that passes.

It is some years now since Frances O’Grady, the outgoing head of the British Trades Union Congress, TUC, said there were no jobs on a dead planet. She was dead right on that. She was signalling that workers are up for the challenge of climate change and want to play their part. There needs to be recognition on the part of the Government of the lived reality of workers today. For example, low-income workers do not want tax cuts; they want better services. The Government's advice to workers struggling to find the money for a fill of diesel, which they need to drive to their low-income jobs, is that they should go to the Department of Social Protection on the day or week that they do not have money. That advice is bananas, as any Deputy who has ever held a constituency clinic will say. The resources and capacity are not there and nobody has told the Department of Social Protection. When someone makes that kind of statement it shows workers just how out of touch that person is with their lived reality.

The Government’s inaction and our ever growing dependence on fossil fuels create the space for motions such as this. This is the Government’s doing. It is what happens because motions like this fill the space the Government has created. Our spokesperson, an Teachta O’Rourke, has already advised the Government of the difficulties with the motion.

I have just come from a meeting of the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment at which we heard from Wind Energy Ireland that we are missing out and will be eclipsed by Scotland and other countries if we do not get our act together. The poverty of ambition of this Government is matched only by the fuel and energy poverty it has created.

See this speech in context