Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to get the opportunity to talk about the energy situation. The Government has been found out. It is bringing in this emergency legislation to make sure the lights will not go out. The Government has been reckless since it took office. It closed Shannonbridge and Lanesborough, even though it had no alternative. There was plenty of turf available to keep those generating stations going. There are even 10,000 acres in Littleton in County Tipperary that is untouched. I was always brought up to know that willful waste makes woeful want. That was the motto in our house, going back to my grandmother's time. At this time of crisis, when energy, gas, fuel and everything is so expensive, we should be using every means we can avail of in our country to ensure our people will not be suffering with the exorbitant costs they have been suffering since the Government took office. The Government is the cause of it. Since it closed down those places, the cost of electricity has gone up every day. What the Government has done is reckless.

The Government has been talking about wind energy since I was elected to the House in 2016 and even before that. The Government has to realise that counties such as County Kerry have played their part. There are as many wind turbines as we can fit into the county. We have more than any other county in the country. We will not accept turbines beside our homes. I do not want a turbine put beside people where it is proposed to put them. The Planning Regulator shot down the County Kerry county development plan so that he can go ahead with wind turbines very close to houses. That is wrong.

The Government is against Shannon LNG in north Kerry. Maybe we could get gas cheaper from the west, that is, from America or other places, but the Government is against that. The Taoiseach stopped the offshore licences for drilling for gas off the Kerry coast in 2019. The Government is against drilling for oil off the Cork coast, even though we have it. It wants us to stop cutting the bit of turf we always cut to put into the fire. I am cutting it and will continue to do so, as my people before me did, in the same bog, going back to 1800. We will continue to do so. My daughter Maura brings it home.

Germany is mining for coal because it is seeing after its people. It is even taking out a village and putting it somewhere else to ensure it will have coal for its people. When our pockets are empty, we will go with a begging bowl to Germany for a loan or a bailout. China is building more coal-burning generation stations. It has up to 3,000 of them now. We are all under the one sky and whatever the Government does, it will not change the weather. We see what is happening in the USA. Americans have the largest of jeeps of 5.7 l and 7.7 l. They are all petrol. The USA is under the same sky as well. Our energy costs are skyrocketing and energy companies are boasting they are doubling, tripling and quadrupling their profits. The Government is benefiting as well because the more profits these companies make, the more tax the Government gets. However, the poor, hardworking people on the side of the road and small employers are suffering.

My phone is broken every day with people ringing me about the-----

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