Dáil debates

Wednesday, 18 January 2023

Climate Action Plan 2023: Statements

 

4:35 pm

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This plan is a typical con job by this Government, particularly by its Green Party component, and the people who support it. We had the COP shenanigans and the cost of all the aeroplanes that flew out there. They try to use fear. I definitely did not want the book referred to but I got it in the post as well. I did not ask for it, I did not read it and I will not read it because I know what is going on is a sham and a scam. We have the details here already of the failure to roll out broadband, the failure and scandal of the national children's hospital - you name it, because there are countless State projects. Everything that is in this supposed plan will not be achieved and is not achievable.

On the other hand, while this is going on, the Government allows Coillte to be sold off to an English company, Gresham House - a lovely name - and all the sequestration that is in that will go to that company. The farmers who have that land will not have any bit of it. It is the biggest con since time immemorial.

We then have an Irish farm plastics company, operated mainly by ex-IFA people who were in the know, who were scamming and who have driven out private producers which were doing great work picking up farm plastic. Declan Doocey is one in Lismore who they have broken and blackguarded with unfair competition laws. It has been raised in this House and raised at the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine by Deputy Michael Collins and others, but those in government do not want to know about it. The blackguarding they are giving ordinary people is simply shocking.

The owners of hundreds of thousands of houses want retrofitting but they cannot afford to do it and cannot get grants or get the materials. Leave it all to the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, but she will not allow people to cut a cipín, never mind a tree. There is such a bad taste now in farmers’ mouths that they will not go near forestry because she has blackguarded them every which way she can and stopped them from cutting trees, even though they had contracts to do so. It is a shocking situation and it should not be allowed.

This is a three-card trick of the worst order. They keep bringing in more plans here and it is all talk and no action. They have fools made of the children. That is what they are trying to do.

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