Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There is such a cocktail of things here it is hard to know which to choose. It is as though somebody had a lot of random thoughts about all things energy in Ireland and threw them down in a motion. I will go through a few of them. The motion states that to meet our demands for energy and the targets set out in the carbon budgets, Ireland needs to generate more electricity while also reducing carbon emissions. That is right. That leaves no room for debate, as nobody is saying otherwise. It states that while the Climate Action Plan 2021 does not list individual targets for each sector, it details emissions reductions that are needed for each sector of the economy. Sectorial targets are being worked on as we speak, so I am not sure why that is there. It states that Ireland is very heavily reliant on fossil fuels and that approximately 85% of Ireland's energy needs come from fossil fuels. I have no idea where that figure came from as about half of our energy needs come from sustainable and renewable energy sources. I wonder where some of these figures come from.

The motion states that 70% of Ireland's electricity is supposed to come from renewables by 2030 and it is expected that most of Ireland's energy will come from onshore and offshore wind fields as well as solar energy. That is a good thing. We also hope that 30% of that will be community-owned energy which would be really positive. It states that data centres currently consume up to 11% of Ireland’s electricity. I love this one. According to the EPA, if you look at our energy and carbon emissions, 37% is from agriculture, 20% is from transport, 12% is from buildings, 15% is from energy and of that 15%, 14% is from data centres which brings it down to 2.12%. On this freaking out about data centres being the cause of all the carbon emissions, somebody needs to have a maths class on the basics of percentages and how they work because it is not true. If it was true, I would be the first to object to data centres. I will argue with anybody on facts.

There is the whole nuclear thing. I thought that was a joke. I would invite Senator Keogan to Sellafield to meet the families who I met when I went over there. She should listen to their stories about children with Down's syndrome, one pregnancy in four ending in miscarriage, birth defects and mental health issues. She should visit Sellafield with me, meet the people who live there and look at the sea. All you will see there are dead animals. You will see nobody at the beach but in the local hall, you will see a historical gallery of how the beach used to be before the Sellafield plant was built.

She should visit the health board in County Louth and look at its statistics and figures. There are issues along the estuary there because of nuclear waste. I see the Senator is writing but I hope she is listening as well because this is too serious an issue to be messing around with.

I do not know if Senator Keogan remembers Carnsore Point. was not even born when it was an issue but to bring up nuclear energy again is just very dangerous. We have not figured out nuclear waste. It is being dumped into the Irish Sea. That last thing we need is to dump it into our sea ourselves. It is bad enough that it is happening in Sellafield and we cannot do anything about it.

My colleagues and I shut down Sellafield for a day because we did proper research and properly informed ourselves on nuclear waste management. It is not happening. It is still being dumped all over eastern Europe. If nuclear waste is not a bad thing, why are they not dumping it in their own country? Show me a nuclear power plant that is being dealt with properly and is dealing with nuclear waste and then we will have a proper discussion on nuclear energy. Until then, it is dangerous to be toying with the notion.

It is important we focus on real facts and issues so that, as a House, we can come together with solutions because we all agree that have a climate emergency and an energy emergency. Let us focus on getting things done as opposed to throwing random muck that should not even be there.

I mention the issue of turf.Nothing has been set in stone about how we will deal with turf, but we need to deal with it. It is officially a smoky fuel, unfortunately. We all want smoky coal to be banned. We cannot legally ban it without looking at the commercial selling of smoky turf as well. That is the only reason it is there. Do Senators think our thing is to sit around going "Let's mess with the old people of rural Ireland and make sure they can never burn turf again"? Nobody has that thought. The big thing is we have air pollution issues and huge public health issues around smoky coal. We saw over 350 lives saved per year in Dublin because they have the ban since the 1990s. We need it nationwide.

We need Senators to come to the table with the brilliant solutions they have to offer alternatives to turf and not to simplify it in a populist way to suggest we want to lock away all the poor grannies of rural Ireland and that everybody in rural Ireland is reliant on turf. I live in rural Ireland and we save a bit of turf but neither I nor any of my neighbours is completely reliant on turf. I do not believe that 20% of the population of the midlands is reliant on turf solely to heat their houses. It is an insult to the people of the midlands.