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

First, in respect of the electric cars, and I have always said this, the general public are not fools and when the electric car is reliable, affordable and will be a realistic option, people will buy them. I have no doubt about that.

Diesel and petrol cars are reliable and will take people the distance. It is about getting people from A to B, especially those in rural Ireland. They have longer journeys to make and depend on a reliable car.

There is the question of if and when we will have infrastructure sufficient and adequate to provide the service people need. They need a fast way to charge cars and plenty of infrastructure to do so. That is not available at the moment and saying to people they will not be able to buy a diesel or petrol car after such a date – 2030 or whenever it is - is wrong. The Government should incentivise people by providing the infrastructure for electric cars. It must be able to reassure people they will have electricity at a certain time to run these electric cars because when the electricity goes out, everything goes out and the chargers will go out as well. The Minister has to take that into account and not be forced by the Greens into doing these things in a hurry, but to wait until people are sure the electric car is equal to the cars that are there at present and can bring people to Dublin from Castletownbere, Dingle or Valentia Island such that they will not be stopped two or three times along the way when coming up to see someone in hospital or for a serious appointment. An electric car is not an option for those people until radical changes are made. They might be fine for running around, bringing children to school, short journeys and city driving where the mileage is not big. They are probably an option for those people. That is fine. I have nothing against electric cars but we must also have electricity to ensure people are brought where they want to go.

I want to talk about the increases in diesel and petrol that the Government is bringing in on 1 June, 30 September and 31 October. I regret and resent them very much. Adding up what we are told the three increases will amount to, it is actually more than the reductions given at the time fuel went so dear, it forced the Government to reduce excise duty on it. I resent that it is being put up again, especially for the people who are out early in the morning in rural places and have no way of going to work without using a car. They are going on long journeys from rural places like Castlemaine, Gneevgullia, Scartaglin and Brosna. They cannot get into the centres of Tralee, Killarney, Listowel or wherever without a good, efficient car. People will always need cars in rural areas because public transport is not adequate to bring them everywhere they want to go. The Central Bank will not run a public transport system to cater for all the people in rural Kerry, not to mind the rest of the country.

Hauliers will be impacted by these raises. The cost of it is still exorbitant, along with carbon tax. Talking about carbon tax when a litre of petrol was €1.20 was bad enough, but putting on the increase as a percentage now is very unfair and wrong.

When we talk about climate change and stopping people burning a few sods of turf on the fire, it galls me and many people to see rockets heading for the moon, Jupiter or wherever it is. When they lift out of the ground, there is a flame a mile long out of them, and we are made feel guilty about burning a few sods of turf on the fire, like we have done for generations. I can count going back to Tadhg na Rae in Kilgarvan. He is seven generations back from me and he was cutting turf at that time to keep his house warm.

With all the impact we are supposed to have on the climate, at the same time there is no mention in the world of the environmental effect Putin is having on the atmosphere with the bombs he is shelling Ukraine with. Surely we must take everything in context when we are depriving our people of the opportunity to keep themselves warm and hurting them when they go to work by putting taxes on fuel to tax them out of it. It is very wrong and I feel very much for the people I represent in rural Kerry.

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