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

I note the Minister simply ignored the actual question. That is obviously a prepared answer; he has a prepared question. I could go again. Is the Minister aware that the emissions impact of imported LNG is worse than that of coal? This is research from last October by an environmental scientist called Robert Howarth. I will give the Minister some of the lowlights. The paper states that "LNG is 33% worse in terms of planet-heating emissions over a 20-year period compared with coal." It goes on to state that "Drilling, moving, cooling and shipping gas from one country to another uses so much energy that the actual final burning of gas in people’s homes and businesses only accounts for about a third of the total emissions from this process." The large resulting emissions mean there is "no need for LNG as an interim energy source". The paper adds that “ending the use of LNG should be a global priority” and yet the Government is going in the opposite direction. The Government is paying lip service to targets that the previous Government was not going to meet, and that this Government is going to miss by an even greater margin, unfortunately, than it was on track to miss them by. It seems that this is driven by the Healy-Raes on one hand and Donald Trump on the other.

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