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

It is like giving a bag of sweets to try to stop them talking and criticising. That will not wash. We need urgent and meaningful actions from the Minister's Government. The Minister's Government has been reckless. Yes, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael let the Minister, Deputy Ryan, off the rails and let him wreak havoc with his policies.

This morning I also wish to allude to the carbon tax. The Rural Independent Group was the only group that was strongly opposed to the carbon tax. Again, we call for this to be scrapped immediately. People are trying to decide whether to spend money on food or on fuel. This is the harsh reality that the Minister needs to understand. The Minister needs to know the facts. It is not right. Our hauliers are struggling to keep things going and to keep businesses going, which keeps the economy going and to which they contribute hugely.

The issues we are dealing with are not just timely, they are of the utmost urgency. I say this again. The sense I am getting, which is a sense that is becoming increasingly ominous by the day, is that the country is moving at speed towards the precipice. We are heading into the storm at a time when safe harbour rarely appeared so distant. Perhaps it would not be so bad if we had trust and confidence in the captains of the ship of the State to steer us through this crisis and to get us safely out the other side. This includes Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and not just the Green Party. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are part of this mess and this disaster. The reality is that it is precisely those people who have set us upon this course of fragile energy security who are the same people tasked with steering us a safe passage. Obviously, they have been reckless in the past, so nobody has confidence. Despite all their rhetoric, the people at the wheel appear blind to the dangers we are facing. They seem incapable of recognising that a sane response in the face of such a crisis would be to apply the brakes or even reverse course, especially when it is now increasingly obvious what role the Government's current green energy policy has played in bringing us to this point of danger.

They would not propose, for example, in the middle of a generational crisis in home energy, the silly and nonsensical policy idea of banning oil and gas heaters. They would not tell families, especially those with children, to limit their energy use between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., just when many kids are home from school and many parents are only in the door from work. Is the Minister proposing that mothers and fathers get up at 5 a.m. to cook the dinner? It would be an absolute joke if it were not so serious.

The pressure that families are under, just as they emerge on the other side of a mental health crisis created by the pandemic, is simply fierce. I note that the Minister has finally received the report he commissioned from the UK-based analyst, CEPA, and its review of Ireland's energy security. From replies to parliamentary questions I have submitted on this matter, we know the report has cost at least €170,000. The consultants need to have no worry about paying their bills if that is the case. We told the Minister there would be an energy security crisis.

I was one of the few Deputies who opposed the closure of the power plants at Shannonbridge and Lanesborough, along with my Rural Independent Group colleagues. I call on the Minister and the Government to get real, wake up and smell the coffee and open up those power plants immediately.

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