Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We put down this motion in good faith and I am delighted to see the support it has got. Ar an gcéad dul síos, ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil don iar-Sheanadóir Brian Ó Domhnaill agus do Mhairead san oifig for their research on this. It is quite a basic, simple, honest-to-God motion that ordinary people would recommend. I mean no disrespect to the Minister of State's script that he read out, nor to the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth's script. As usual the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan is not here. Where is he? He is at COP27 in Egypt. Some 400 private jets flew in there and the Government has the audacity to tell people to tighten their belts. I remember the late Charles Haughey with the Charvet shirts telling people to tighten their belts. There is a sense of déja vu; we are here again. This time people are crippled and they are on their knees, begging on life support.

The Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth is gone but I was delighted he was so welcoming of our motion. We are common-sense people. We are not climate deniers. The issue that the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, and others seem to have with us is that we want to keep the lights on here in the interim until we have all the wind that is blowing. At the risk of repeating ourselves and what Deputy O'Donoghue said at the outset, T.K. Whitaker, God rest him, the forefathers of this country and the visionaries had such a passion and a view. I am not an idealist as regards having systems nationalised but we may have to nationalise the power companies because they are not playing ball. Regardless of whether it is a result of pressure from us or our motion, I am glad to see SSE Airtricity has announced today that it will forego all profits for the rest of the year. That is what we need. We need more sticks and less of the codology. We need more cop on instead of COP summits. The children who were in the Gallery earlier, some are still here, were laughing at us because we cannot get this.

We are talking about wind and the big plans that are made that in ten years' time, we are going to be all wind, offshore and everything else. Where is it? The wind blows, as Deputy O'Donoghue said, and it does not cost anything for the wind to blow. Where is the regulator? We met the most senior executives of the ESB last week and we learned a lot from them. It is a bad day when we do not learn something. They told us they were waiting for the regulator because this statutory instrument had been passed in Europe. Why are we the laggards always? When it is something that will help the people we are last to do it but if it is something that will penalise the people, we are jumping up and down to do it and to add three or four more statutory instruments to it. Some 96% of all the wind energy produced in Ireland is priced at the same price as gas, even though it is produced at a fraction of the cost. Does the Government get that? It is all bundled in when the ESB or whoever goes out to buy. It is all in there and we are paying that grubby tax on it even though it is cleanly produced.

Rip-off Ireland is alive and well in the Government. The regulator is asleep, the energy companies are gouging and no one says a word; why would they? The Government allowed the banks to walk away with billions, bailed them out. It allowed all the big companies put in the data centres. What is big is wonderful as far as the Government is concerned. The Ministers would be great men building snowmen. They would go raving mad altogether at the biggest one, like children with sweets in a confectionary shop. That is what the Government is like while the people perish.

Was it Marie Antoinette who said "let them eat cake"? We had lectures this morning for all public buildings not to have a kettle in their offices, not to boil a kettle. Are we going to go back to the beart easnach, the women carrying it tied to their backs with the shawl and they made a little tripod, brought a billy can of water and boiled it? Are we going to do that out in the yard of public offices here? Would the Government cop itself on instead of going to COP26 or 27, whatever it is? It is for a show and glory and to be seen to be better than anybody else. We are small fish in a big pond and we should behave with respect for our nation and not be trying to keep up with all the big boys. We will drive our people into penury to be as good as what they are out there when we see what is happening in China and Germany. We have been talking this morning about what is going on in Spain and Italy where they have implemented this regulation. We will not implement it at all. We will just dance around it and let the taxpayers suffer.

In layman's terms, it costs €1,000 per kilowatt hour and the cost of making electricity is €10 per kilowatt hour. The kilowatt hour and all the rest are put in together and the highest price is paid for it. Any of us doing a business deal would not do that. The five or six of us here are small business people. We understand and we feel the pain of all the businesses. I am sure the Minister of State should too, in Limerick. This affects shops, butchers, confectioners and hairdressers; anything using the heat.

The Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth is gone. I asked for clarification yesterday that the temporary business energy support scheme, TBESS, which was introduced to help people up to €10,000, is not applicable if they are using oil as their main source of heating. Where are they going to get piped gas or natural gas in the hills of Hollyford or Killenaule or up in the Knockmealdowns or the Galtees, or much lower down in towns that do not have natural gas? Very few towns have it, a handful in Tipperary. The genie is out of the bottle and the Government is caught napping. I could use another analogy; I will not but I might have to. The Government is wrong and hurtful to the people. I believe it flies in the face of God and it flies in the face of European and national law. What about our Constitution which says we are supposed to look after our people and cherish them equally? We want to honour the big boys.

There is a great wind farm rip-off where greedy electricity plants sell us electricity at sky-high prices. It is made from wind, hot air. Goodness, if we had a channel in here we would make a great few kilowatts of it too with the amount of hot air spoken in here at times. I can speak a bit myself as well, I will not exonerate myself from that. Our motion calls for implementation of EU Council Regulation 2022/1854, which came into effect on 8 October. Here we are in the middle of November with no sign of implementing it in this country.

When it comes to implementing something good for the people we are laggards and blackguards but when it comes to something that is punitive, whether it is in agriculture, stopping turf cutting or a plethora of issues we do it that night. We can put VAT up here at midnight on budget night and we are debating the Finance Bill 2022, including measures to take away company cars and benefit-in-kind. The Minister blindly said we have to deal with this. Businesses will close and companies cannot compete. We are being penalised and all the workers are being penalised if they do not have a low emissions car. Where is the worker going to charge the car? Where is the infrastructure? Not only does the Government have the cart before the horse but the cart is gone down Dame St. while we are still here with the horse. If the Government had a horse it might break wind and the Government would ban it as well. That is the problem with the Government now that it has become so politically correct. I remember ploughing and bringing hay with horses and I drew water from a well with horses. Are we going to go back to that? We cannot boil the water either, unless we have the beart easnach and the sod of turf. The men in white coats should be around here regularly and checking if people in the Government are feeling okay.

What has gone wrong with the Government that it wants to drive our ordinary people into penury, hardship and misery? This includes the man and woman going to work, the delivery services and the man in the van who supplies this country. It also includes the self-employed man with a concrete lorry. I mention SuperValu, which has a chain in Tipperary. In some cases the ESB bill of these shops has gone up from €8,000 to €24,000. They will get half of that back but how are they going to come up with the other €8,000 every month? It is not doable. I mention the price of shopping and Mom's purse is not able to stretch. People will either be hungry or cold or in some cases it will be both. The fear and terror the Government has driven into people is palpable. The media has to take a fair share of the blame too for fanning the flames on climate change. It is real but it is not the be-all and end-all when we see, for example, coal mines being opened in Germany, plants being dismantled in the midlands of Ireland and set up again out foreign and exporting coal and bringing it back in refined. It is codology. If the forefathers who fought for this country thought we would inherit it and follow on with this madness and lunacy they would never have lifted a finger to free Ireland. They would have left it in the United Kingdom or done something else because it is mockery, madness and a charade.

The Government is not opposing our motion so I ask it to implement it. Is this another one of the magic tricks or the liquorice allsorts? The Government will not oppose it but it will not implement it either. There is a statutory instrument to be signed into law to make sure that if we are buying energy in bulk the vast majority of what is produced by wind is not charged at the same price as oil. It is making a mockery of the Government's clean energy and how it wants people to go off fossil fuels. It is a three-card trick and these days it is becoming a 24-card trick. All the while the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is outside eating lettuce and smoked salmon with all the rest of them and God knows what they are not eating at COP27; I have not seen the menu and nor do I care about it. I hope meat is on the menu and it might be €120 per plate. I would not look at those lavish things; I would only aspire to them at a wedding and I have a wedding coming up shortly. My daughter is getting married Friday week and hopefully we will have a feast and a good day. We will celebrate as we always do. We want the Minister of State to implement the statutory instrument.

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