Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I did not want the Minister of State to take my criticism personally. They are political criticisms and they are criticisms of the Minister of State's party propping up a neoliberal and right-wing set of parties. Those parties are bound to fail on climate because they believe in the capitalist model of doing business and economics, as the Green Party apparently does because it voted against every measure that any progressive element of the Opposition has tried to bring in, including curbing the proliferation of data centres, to mention but one. It is not a personal criticism of the Minister of State; it is a criticism of the politics that are driving the climate agenda in this country.

That is why the young people on the streets on Friday will be demanding system change. That means changing our economic system and priorities, as well as our environmental priorities because if you do not change the economic priorities then you are going to see global banks continuing to fund fossil fuel corporations to the tune of $3.8 trillion to explore and extract more fossil fuels. The signs on the planet are very worrying. We are seeing natural systems in the process of falling apart and these are systems that have held the planet together. The Minister of State and I know this and we have been watching this but the Minister of State is in government and I am not so I have every right to criticise him for his failures.

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