Air Pollution (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-28
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Victor Boyhan (IND), Agricultural Panel

This is Senator O'Reilly's amendment, and I am only seconding it, but I share her concerns. The Minister of State represents a rural and urban constituency. He will know about the floods and storm in the past few days. There were many people relying on solid fuel fires to light and heat their homes and to congregate around those simple homestead fires. My understanding of what Senator O'Reilly is talking about is the need for greater clarity. We need absolute clarity in relation to it.
Let us keep this simple. This is not a science. We know there are many parts of the country that have no fireplaces. We know they were the places that had the storms. I know people just outside Loughrea in County Galway. They were 16 days without power. They were not getting kindling. They had not used the fire for two years, but they were trying to light it and heat the house. These are the families we cherish and talk about in terms of our rural communities.
Let us keep it simple. If someone wants to go out and get a few twigs, a few logs or another bit of solid fuel to heat themselves, that is not unreasonable. If that simple message is lost in the complexities of the Minister of State's language or mine, then we are not communicating with the people we represent. It is that simple a message. He has the opportunity to give absolute clarity and maybe issue a circular or a memo on it. We need clarity. I do not want it out there that Timmy Dooley, "the big Minister up in the big office in Dublin," is now going to curtail all the little homestead fires. That is not his intention, but I want to say that because it is easy to put a spin on anything. He knows that more than anyone else, so I would be interested to hear what he has to say.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-01-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:33+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-28