Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the Minister that there are Deputies in this House and councillors who do not fully grasp the reality of climate change and what will be and what is coming down the track to us. People and communities need to understand, and the Minister needs to help them make the changes they need to make.

The Social Democrats have sent a proposal in respect of solar to the Minister, and I will keep on talking about it because it will reduce people’s household energy demand by 40%. For some reason, the Government is not funding or doing this. That is a big gap in what the Minister is doing.

The Minister talks about the 700 MW of renewable power. That is very welcome, but how many hundreds of megawatts of emergency generation has the Minister allocated and granted this year to coal and gas-fired generation because he has allowed data centres to continue at pace with the pressures they have put on our energy grid? The Minister cannot look at these issues separately and there must be a holistic approach. All arms of Government need to be working on this. I fear the Minister is not being given the support from his colleagues in this. A whole-of-government approach is needed.

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