The Taoiseach can voice an objection.

We do not have to locate the Conference of the Parties in them.

I wish to share time with Deputies Boyd Barrett and Barry.

We will speak in that order. I am first of course. I welcome the temporary respite these three tranches will give people. They are not tranches of €200, but €187 in three bundles. The way I describe them is as temporary life-saving devices for people who are drowning in debt. The underlying problem has still not gone away. These grants will help to cushion up to 20% of the price hikes people face, but that means they will still have to shoulder 80% of the massive hikes. I reject the idea that this is caused solely …

I move amendment No. 1: A. To insert the following after "training and development funding for Disabled Persons Organisations (DPOs)": "- people with disabilities have faced a cost-of-living crisis for decades, and the 2021 Central Statistics Office Survey on Income and Living Conditions data shows increases in disability poverty across all indicators, at a time when the national averages decreased; and - people with disabilities face poverty rates three to five times higher than the national average, and the at-ri…

As the dust settles on this massive spin operation from the Government in regard to this year's budget, a few things have become clearer. According to many commentators, the next year will see people's living standards decline. Inflation will run at more than 8% for the coming year and living standards will fall by 3% this year and 2% in the following year. The budget electricity grants and the various one-off payments have one common theme, namely, they will attempt to deal with the effects of the crisis but not w…

There is no doubt we are facing a real crisis. It is a crisis that has millions of people fearful of their next bill with thousands more being pushed into that situation daily, who are not being officially recognised. We have hundreds of thousands of people officially recognised as living in energy poverty, but hundreds of thousands more are not recognised. By the end of the crisis, without action from the Government we may have a majority of citizens in energy poverty and experiencing real hardship in keeping on t…

-----if Liz Truss decided to turn it off. Repeatedly over the years reliance on British gas has been held up as a reason for not finding our own oil and gas. I will repeat again what many have confirmed, which is that there is no threat to our gas supplies from Britain.

There is no threat to our gas supplies from Britain. Reliance on Britain would only be replaced by reliance on North American fracked gas or LNG from Qatar or another similar dictatorship. I am in favour of eliminating our reliance on British and North Sea gas. The quicker we do it the better but we should not replace it with reliance on a different source of oil or gas. The war in Ukraine is being used by global fossil fuel interests to row back on climate action and to further develop new streams of oil and gas a…

I thank Sinn Féin for this motion, which we fully support. Retrofitting is a key solution to two crises, namely, the climate crisis and the energy crisis, but for us the latter is the immediate one. I will deal with the climate crisis in a minute but first I want to give an account of two homes I visited recently. They were two council-owned homes that were retrofitted to a high BER. One family is very poor with two special needs kids. You walk in the door and the house is warm even though they have not turned on t…

Will the Acting Chairman clarify how much time I have?

Okay. We need some clarity on the issue I am raising. There is a jarring discrepancy between the media coverage of the energy review yesterday and the analysis from some NGOs and columnists today. Will the Minister clarify whether there will be an LNG terminal in this country, either privately built or State-owned? The substantial question I ask him to answer is how such a facility will be compatible with the climate objectives of the State.

Friends of the Earth has said the expert review "signals the death knell of Shannon LNG". Is the Minister confirming or denying that? There is a jarring discrepancy on this point and, apart from that, there is a discrepancy of views within the Government. The Minister of State, Deputy O'Donovan, recently said: "The time for discussion is over. We need to build an LNG as soon as possible." Either he has not read the review or the Minister and I are misinterpreting it. Like other Deputies, the Minister of State wants…

New Fortress Energy has set up the Shannon LNG Limited company and paid Kerry County Council more than €4 million as a development contribution for widening the road to Tarbert, €2 million of which was paid even before the planning permission application was lodged. The question then is whether Kerry County Council now owes this money and whether it is liable to pay it back to New Fortress Energy or whether it has just been gifted to the council and those whom it contracts. I would like to share the optimistic inte…

It is unsustainable.

There is much in the motion with which we can agree but we cannot agree with its core. The heart of it is wrong. It is incorrect. More motions such as this will be tabled and so they should. Almost one year ago People Before Profit tabled a motion on the cost-of-energy crisis that was emerging. Nothing has changed. Unfortunately motions and Bills in the Dáil do not deliver, certainly not those coming from the Opposition. Whether we agree or disagree with it, how we really get change is through getting masses of peo…

I will start unusually by quoting a tweet from the renowned Mr. Vincent Browne: Isn’t it unfortunate for Denis O’Brien that so many of his involvements result in controversy: the award of the Irish mobile phone licence; INM; Digicel; Beacon hospital over vaccines; and now Siteserve. Perhaps it has all to do just with poor communications. We have to look at the bare facts of this report, however. They are pretty astonishing, as is the fact that it seems the commission will not investigate the other 37 transactions i…

The Minister of State's intervention is totally illogical. He has just said the Government's interventions in housing are targeted, legally sound and effective. Is this why, when polled and asked, the majority of people in the State say that housing is the number one issue for them? Is this because the Government has been so successful in its targeting, its legally sound legislation, its timeliness and its effectiveness? It does not add up. There is a theme in this Government that any alternative proposed by the Op…

I will read briefly from an email I received from a whisteblower. We are disappointed to report that the Protected Disclosure Amendment Bill 2022, as currently proposed by Minister McGrath ..., is deficient and defunct. ... Legal Advice recently informed that this framework is inappropriate and not suitable for the intended purpose. ... The Protected Disclosures Amendment Bill fails to deliver an effective remedy as provided under Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Unfortunately, Ireland has a r…

Yes.