Earth Day: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-22
============================================================

Michael Collins (II), Cork South-West

We have been a long time talking about targets in this House and we are way off our game. To be honest, I have spoken quite a lot about Barryroe oil field and fossil fuels since I came into the Dáil, and I often got Deputies sitting to my right screaming and roaring back at me. After the past two weeks, they now know that we cannot do without fossil fuels. Common sense has prevailed. In fairness, I will be honest that I need education as well. There is no point in me just shouting that fossil fuels are the way forward and moving on. That is ridiculous too, but I always felt that Barryroe should have been explored because it could have been a chance to fund renewables, the renewables that we promised this nation when I came into the Dáil ten years ago and that have not been delivered. It is the only way forward.
We should sit down and put together a cross-party group of people with maybe extreme views on every side, as long as they would not be getting overly angry with each other, to see if they could come to a consensus in the middle because there is a middle ground there somewhere. We do have to look after the environment, and I am big into that. However, it should not come at a price and it is coming at a huge price to the people of rural Ireland with the carbon tax. Carbon tax hits rural people 99% more than anybody else. Those are the facts. People can be in denial and they can say this or that.
We know the mindset within Fine Gael. Leo Varadkar, the former leader of Fine Gael, has proven it this week when he decimated rural people and agriculture. It was an absolute disgrace. That was his mindset the whole time and he is now coming clean. He did not say that when he was below at the ploughing championships. He did not say that when he was canvassing around rural places. He told us we were great people. We now find out that Fine Gael does not like farmers or rural people at all. The Minister of State should read his statement. It was not good enough.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-22