Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I compliment the Regional Group for bringing forward this motion. I was a bit surprised to see the Government has not opposed it. What is going on here? Parts of this motion, which I agree 100% with, is all for things the Minister, Deputy Ryan, is totally opposed to. He is just accepting the motion and he will have it raced and passed through here and do nothing about it. This is the greatest lazy and laissez-faireway of dealing with this parliamentary system. This is probably the tenth time in the past year the Government has done this. The Government's policies are the opposite to what is in the motion, but it accepts it because it does not have the gumption, guts or sense, or the trust in the backbenchers that it will vote with the Government in a vote. It is afraid of another humiliation and another few people overboard.

This is the greatest con job that ever hit this country because the Minister said in 2005 that we would have to use all of our natural resources of oil and gas because we were not sure of supplies from Russia and elsewhere. How did the Minister change so much over the years to follow what I call quite an evil strategy? He will have people without power in cold and dark in their houses. Small businesses cannot survive, on top of what happened during Covid The Government closed all the small businesses and let the big multinationals get bigger.

What master is the Government serving? Who is its master? The Minister could not have changed that much in 14 years. He recently said he was shocked by this energy crisis. He knew about it 14 years ago. I ask the Minister to come clean with us. I respect his integrity. What masters are he, An Taoiseach, Deputy Martin, and An Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, serving? The global interests.

There is another big conference coming up on the 21 September and more drastic and draconian decisions will be made with regard to human life and this planet. It is not anything to do with climate change. It is to do with control and greed and making big businesses bigger and big chequebooks for bigger people. That is what it is. The Minister should come clean with the people. Has it taken him 14 years to find out that we will have an energy crisis? His deliberate policies to penalise, perish and humiliate the Irish people are disgraceful.

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