I ask that the Government pay attention to them.

It is coming from that corner.

I will not stand here and shout and have a back and forth because there has been far too much shouting this week already. There has been far too much chest beating and too many instances of people not listening, not engaging and of parties becoming so entrenched that we were at real risk last week of the country collapsing. I was so worried about where those protests were going to end up. I want to commend the work of An Garda Síochána. The work gardaí did across the country was incredible. They went in and spoke t…

I am extremely concerned by what the Minister and this Government are doing in the area of climate action and now in the area of climate law. They are dismantling years of work and future generations will bear the cost. Section 7 of the Critical Infrastructure Bill provides for a disapplication of section 15 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 in specific cases. Simply put, this means now that large infrastructure projects carried out in transport, energy, water and wastewater will no longer h…

I will return later in my contribution to the aspects of the debate my party colleague has raised. The 2 cent reduction in the NORA levy is a drop in the ocean for homeowners and householders who are relying on home heating oil, the hundreds of thousands of people who are not going to benefit from the excise cuts, which the Social Democrats supported, and the people who will continue to find it very difficult to put a half-fill or a fill of oil in their tanks. The Social Democrats have repeatedly acknowledged that …

I will speak to both Ministers then. I would ask that they look at the amendments we put forward and not use this Bill to extend this provision to 18 months and essentially pull all the funding that is going into the climate action fund for things like solar PV for schools, EV charging units, the community action funds, and the community and climate officers in the different local authorities. Many really important projects are funded by this scheme. Please do not use this as a way to pull the funding for 18 months…

I thank the Minister. I also want to talk about price-gouging. The CRU was mentioned earlier. The CSO reported this week that wholesale electricity prices have dropped by 72% since the peak in August 2022. We have not seen a 72% reduction in retail prices here in Ireland and indeed many people are still really suffering from the incredible costs of electricity and gas as a result of the invasion of Ukraine. The Minister has called on the CRU to look into aspects of price-gouging in the energy sector and to consider…

A figure of €200 million is a huge amount of money. I know the Minister may say that he has no intention of pulling this money from the Climate Action Fund but the potential is there using this particular piece of legislation. That in itself is very concerning. One of the reasons I am really worried about this is because climate action always plays second fiddle to every other required or necessary spend the State makes. It always finds it really hard. It is difficult to get money for climate action and so when mon…

I do not understand the difference between the Climate Action Fund and the NORA levy that funds it and the carbon tax. It is really important that the Government has stood strong with the carbon tax and it is being very clear that it is to be ring-fenced for climate action. Only today, in the Dáil, the Taoiseach was highly critical of Sinn Féin and the fact that Sinn Féin continually asked for the carbon tax to be scrapped or reduced. Indeed, what the Taoiseach said was that it "is essential to guarantee ring-fence…

When global energy crises hit, there is one certainty in Ireland and that is that energy prices shoot sky high like a rocket and then take years to drop. We saw it happen when Russia invaded Ukraine. In fact, there are still people suffering the consequences of that, with 320,000 remaining in arrears on their electricity bills. We are still facing sky-high electricity prices despite the CSO reporting yesterday that wholesale electricity prices are down by 72% since the peak. People in Ireland have not seen a 72% re…

I too want to raise the report by Conor Gallagher in today's edition of The Irish Times , which was carried out in conjunction with the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. It is very concerning. It is reported that Russian smelters supplied by the Limerick Aughinish Alumina plant are selling vast amounts of aluminium to a trading company that supplies dozens of Russian arms manufacturers. Is the Taoiseach's Government aware of any links between companies receiving aluminium from Aughinish Alumina and …

Was the Taoiseach aware of this?

The Taoiseach said today that the proposed LNG plant is necessary from an energy security perspective. I have spent many hours going through the documentation for that argument, and I cannot see how this plant is required from an energy security perspective. There are alternative ways of dealing with energy security. This plant will lock us into fossil fuel infrastructure and it will be an incredibly costly exercise, with a cost of €1 billion over ten years. If an alternative and evidence for that alternative are p…

We are hearing really awful reports from the UK about the viral meningitis outbreak there. Unfortunately, two young people have died and there have been 27 cases in total. There has also been a case in Belfast but I understand the two instances are not connected. In this country, teenagers and young people were not part of the vaccination program that was rolled out in 2016. What is the Government doing to warn parents about symptoms and to monitor the situation in the hope that the outbreak does not spread from th…

The older I get and the longer I am in politics, the more frustrating I find it when International Women's Day rolls around every year. We come in here and people from all the benches say the same things. We talk about the challenges women face and the progress being made. It sort of seems, though, that everything is just set aside for that day, and then we all go back to our business. Those fundamental structural and cultural changes that we need to see really have not happened yet. Last Friday, when I was thinkin…

I thank Sinn Féin for introducing this motion. It is, unfortunately, very timely. We are witnessing the worst oil crisis the world has ever seen. It is worse than the oil shocks of the last century and worse than the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, which we can all remember very clearly. However, for Irish people, this comes during an existing cost-of-living crisis. People are already struggling and this is compounding that struggle for them. While people are watching their rent climb, their mortgage interest eatin…

I raise the issue of Go-Ahead Ireland services in Wicklow. We have seen consistent problems with the service being provided by Go-Ahead. I raised this issue in the Dáil most recently a month ago. There were instances when Go-Ahead buses were not travelling the entire route and were skipping a number of stops. In one instance a young woman who has intellectual and physical disabilities was on the bus and it did not bring her down her road, which it was meant to do. She ended up being brought to the next village and …

That is what I was told as well.

The Minister is correct that I am being told a different story by people on the ground. I will come back to him directly on this. I am worried about how no-shows are being recorded. I am being told there are no-shows, yet the NTA is not recording them or they are not being recorded in the systems as no-shows. I will speak to the Minister about this because it may require a more in-depth conversation. The Minister knows I am a big fan of public transport but it also needs to be reliable. If it is not reliable, there…

The war in the Middle East is spiralling out of control and the impacts are already being felt. Prices for home heating oil have already shot up by 40% which means people having to find an extra €250 or €300 for a 500-litre fill. Who has that kind of money? Gas prices are also skyrocketing within the UK, with the UK recording a 100% increase in wholesale prices in just two days. That is the biggest ever 48-hour increase since records began. We are particularly exposed to these extortionate price rises in this count…