John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome Ms Childers and compliment her on her stance on austerity, with which I agree, as does the IMF. Before I came into the Seanad I spent 28 years working as a community welfare officer dealing with people on the margins. At the time one was dealing mainly with people on social welfare, but the new poor today are the middle income earners, the gardaí, nurses and teachers. No more blood can be sucked out of them. I feel very strongly, along Ms Childers's lines, that there must be another way forward. As Senator Landy said, we have been the best boy in the class and we have done as much as we can do. There must be another way forward.

While I know Ms Childers sits on the European Parliament’s environment committee, I am not sure if wind energy is one of her areas of expertise. For the past 14 months, I have been blowing the same trumpet on the issue of minimum distances wind turbines should be from family homes. I introduced a Bill on the matter, which passed Second Stage, which stated the taller the turbine, the further they must be set back from family homes. Of course, the Bill was parked, as Senator Leyden predicted with all his experience in this House.