Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We can safely say that the only temperature that will be rising over the winter months is the temperature of ordinary people's anger and frustration. That anger has already reached boiling point in many locations throughout the world as people see the collapse in access to affordable heating and energy supplies. Gas and electricity prices are fast reaching the stage of becoming the equivalent of a second mortgage payment. Social housing tenants are living in dread of not being able to pay their rent. Older people are being terrified into darkness and cold because of the sheer and utter largely imposed crisis that our own energy policies have created.

The forced march towards reliance on renewable sources of energy without a proper system of alternatives being in place represents to my mind one of the most despicable acts of political negligence and contempt I have ever witnessed towards the lives and businesses of ordinary people. Energy suppliers are leaving the market due to unsustainable costs.

We saw, only yesterday, the announcement by Panda Power that it will be exiting the Irish market, the fourth supplier to do so. This will lump tens of thousands of customers onto higher tariffs at a time of already exorbitant costs. The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications has been going around like some kind of political ostrich, with his head in the sand. The Greens, with their spineless allies in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, put their hands to their ears like little children, when everyone with an ounce of cop-on and objectivity was pointing out the sheer stupidity of the current approach to energy policy. All three Government parties, through recklessness and mismanagement, have condemned our people to a drop in living standards not seen in 40 years. Government Members should hang their heads in shame.

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