Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

It is another day and we have another devastating report predicting catastrophe for humanity if we continue on the track we are on. The UN environmental programme report on the emissions gap says we are heading for 3°C. It says that by 2030, we will have overshot the carbon budget to give us a 50% chance of avoiding 1.5°C, and then we will keep going.

The Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, has said that all of this is a failure of leadership, a betrayal of the vulnerable and a large missed opportunity. If he wanted to know why, if he listened in to the debate in this Chamber over the past hour he would get an illustration of precisely what that looks like. A backbench TD from the Taoiseach's own party was calling for more drilling of oil and gas. The Taoiseach himself just a few moments ago said that we cannot have system change, that system change takes time and that Ireland only produces so many emissions so there is only really so much we can do. This Government is committed to business as usual while the world burns and while we head towards absolute catastrophe for billions of people on this planet, including in this country with more floods, and the impact of climate change worldwide with droughts, famines and so on. Why does the Taoiseach refuse to act? Why is it business as usual? Is it because the profits for the fossil fuel companies, the data centres, the big tech, and the big agribusinesses come before people and the future of our planet?

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