Paul Murphy
Dublin South-West · People Before Profit-Solidarity · Ireland
“The Minister of State assured us we are bound by international law but then went on to talk about the fact that he wants to deploy troops outside the framework of international law. That is why the Government is getting rid of the triple lock. All the triple lock does is ensure that we only can send troops in line with international law.”
“The case for MetroLink south west is extremely strong. There are 350,000 people living between the Luas red and green lines. That is who will be served by this.”
“Hopefully the junior Minister will be able to clarify. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, said earlier to Deputy Ó Laoghaire, "The people I speak to do not like the fact that Russia has essentially removed, or will remove in the coming months, all our peacekeeping troops from UNIFIL".”
“I, too, want to ask about the senior Minister. This came up at the Dáil reform committee last week. It is very peculiar that a senior Minister is here and has answered previous questions on the triple lock today and then – no offence meant - we have the junior Minister answering these questions, which precisely prevents the continuation o…”
“Its defence is that we should not worry because the Government is only going to send them as part of an international force. I do not think anyone here thinks the Government is going to invade a country all by itself.”
“It is there in black and white in the programme for Government and the Government needs to live up to its commitment to do a new, properly independent feasibility study. I appeal to the Minister of State to ask the Minister for Transport to meet with the metro south west group which has been doing such excellent campaigning on this issue.”
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“It is such a joke to say that we have these climate obligations that are legally binding and we are never going to do anything that is bad for the environment even while disapplying the climate obligations that are legally binding. It makes them entirely worthless. Aviation is now doing more climate harm in Ireland than cars. What the Minister is hiding behind is that aviation emissions are not counted in our climate targets, but as has been asked, so what? We are not in this only for where the emissions are counted. The climate keeps the score. The greenhouse gas emissions are counted where it matters in terms of the impact it will have on the world that our children and our children's children will struggle to live in.”
“It is utterly outrageous that we are expected to deal with a Bill such as this, the Bill we just dealt with and the next Bill we are dealing with in two hours' time, with Committee Stage and Report Stage all in one go. We will not get to a tiny fraction of the amendments. We will not have any sort of detailed engagement. It is not because we are under much pressure for time, but because the Minister does not want to debate this stuff. The Minister does not want the emperor to be seen, and said, to have no clothes and that, on this issue, the Minister has not even done an economic impact assessment even though he is proposing to disapply the climate obligations.”
“The Minister was not here when I spoke earlier on the LNG Bill, so I will make the point to him now. What the Minister is doing tonight is disgraceful. This is, in six hours, a bonfire of our climate commitments. What we are seeing in action is the Minister's abandonment of targets that we were told many times were legally binding and, therefore, we did not need to worry and the Government would do everything. This is what this means. It is what the Minister has done in terms of LNG. It is what the Minister is doing now. What the Minister is doing is a disgrace - the content of it - but the way that he is doing it is outrageous.”
“It knows what it is doing is going to destroy the planet and hurt people in the pocket here and now but nonetheless it is going full steam ahead and will not even allow a proper debate on these issues.”
“If Deputy Healy-Rae were in charge and said he did not believe in any of this climate change nonsense, that it had nothing to do with human activity, that we were going to go full steam ahead for fracked gas and were going to drill for fracked gas here and asked what the problem is with more fossil fuel usage, that, in a way, is logically coherent. If fossil fuels are not the problem, then what is the problem? However, the Government accepts that fossil fuels are the problem but nonetheless says full steam ahead for LNG. It nonetheless says full steam ahead with expansion of Dublin Airport and full steam ahead for data centres and AI. I really think that is worse.”
“I am less concerned about that. It is fine. The main thing I have a problem with is that we have a Government that did not really make an effort there to object to the climate denialism but will, on occasion, object to climate denialism and will say it recognises the science. We have a Government that says climate change is real and accepts that climate change is caused by fossil fuels. It accepts that climate change is a consequence of the greenhouse gas emissions. It says we are going to sign up to legally binding climate targets because we take this seriously and care about the future of our planet, and then it totally ignores it all. That is worse in a way.”
“The past 11 years have been the 11 hottest years on record. We know that decade after decade, for six decades now, each has been hotter than the one before it. We know the oceans are heating up and that they are becoming increasingly acidic. We know, and people know from their own experience, that we have more and more extreme weather events. It is not just people's own experience. It is also tracked. You could go on and on but this is the settled scientific consensus. To be honest, I am less concerned about the climate denialism of Deputy Healy-Rae. He is entitled to his opinion. I think he is wrong, and I think the scientific consensus really says that there is no basis for what he is saying.”
“I will try to be swift, so we can move on. We have heard the same speech from Deputy Danny Healy-Rae on a number of occasions, effectively denying human-caused climate change by saying we have had storms and extreme weather events in the past. Yes, we have had storms and extreme weather events in the past. That is not evidence against human-created climate change. The evidence is very clear. There is a clear scientific consensus. Deputy Healy-Rae says he has heard that some paper exists that proves the climatologists and climate scientists are all wrong and when he gets his hands on it he will bring it here. He obviously has not read the paper. He knows it exists somewhere out there in the ether, and he trusts it because it tells him what he wants to hear, which is that climate change is not happening. People know themselves.”
“The main thing is that we can agree or disagree on any of these arguments. That is fine. It is a disgrace not to allow us to debate the Bill, not to have a Committee Stage that can go through it properly, not to give proper time on Report Stage and not to allow us to get through the vast majority of the amendments that we have before us. It is a disgrace and it is a conscious and cynical move by the Government.”
“It is also about a matter related to not the next Bill but the one after that, the AI Bill, which is saying to big tech companies not to worry about all the energy usage, that they have a green light to go and use as much energy as they want for their data centres and that we will burn more and more fossil fuels to facilitate data centres. The idea that we can continue on this track of expanded energy usage, in the best case scenario simply uses up the extra renewable capacity that we are adding, or in the worst case scenario, the vista that is being opened here for commercial LNG and what is happening in many data centres around the country that we will burn gas. In this case, we will burn fracked gas as a consequence. I am interested in the Minister of State's response.”
“The original argument was not to worry because it would only be this one emergency reserve, and it would just sit there. That has moved to being something that will sit there and be emptied six times a year, and the Bill is open to it being moved even further. If the Government was serious about the issue of energy security, it would be investing in battery storage, interconnectors, and different forms of renewable energy that work in different weather conditions, including wind, solar, hydro and so on. What is this about? It is about being friendly to Donald Trump. This is a key ask in terms of the tensions between US imperialism and the EU. He basically had two asks. One was to buy more energy and the second was to buy more of our weapons. This is about appeasing Donald Trump.”
“A key risk in LNG facilities is an uncontrolled release of a cryogenic, toxic, or flammable fluid. This can include liquid releases that form a pool on the ground or water and ignite, creating a potentially long-lasting pool fire. That is on the Minister of State and this Government. The disastrous effects of locking us into fossil fuels and tearing up all of our targets is also on the Government. I think energy security is the Trojan horse. The Government wraps up LNG and says it is energy security. We were not originally told and people will not understand this. The whole terminal has to be emptied six times a year, so a large portion of the gas currently used in this country will end up being fracked gas. It is a Trojan horse. The Government is not excluding commercial developments in this Bill.”
“The Government is locking in not just any fossil fuel infrastructure but the dirtiest possible fossil fuel infrastructure because, ultimately, this is about fracked gas coming from the USA. The Climate Change Advisory Council told the Government that further expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure through an LNG terminal will commit Ireland to further fossil fuel lock-in. It told the Government and it is simply ignoring the council. This is not dealing with the issue of energy security. It is making us reliant on Donald Trump for energy security, or the next US Administration. The consequence is devastating. I put on the record now the hazards that are present here. I quote Stop Shannon LNG, which stated: The importing of LNG is associated with hazards such as gas explosions, threatening local communities.”
“It is about avoiding a real airing of the issues here and hoping that people do not notice that this Government is utterly abandoning all climate commitments, in this case basically in order to satisfy Donald Trump. Who will pay for that? Our children and grandchildren will pay for it. We see the impact of climate change, even in Europe, where people are dying as a result of extreme heat. In a more immediate sense, people will pay with euro from their pockets. This thing will cost €1 billion or more. Who will pay for that? The public will pay by a household levy on energy bills. The public will pay for this LNG development. The Government is locking in fossil fuels. That is the consequence of investing in fossil fuel infrastructure. We should not be investing in any fossil fuel infrastructure at all. It flies in the face of the science.”
“Now we are just disapplying the law to anything to do with climate. We are disapplying the law from LNG, data centres and Dublin Airport. If anything is actually polluting, we are told the climate targets do not apply to that and not to worry about that. It is a joke. We are all expecting the world to go along with the idea that we are all following the science and doing what we need to do when the Government is absolutely in hock to fossil fuel companies, the big airlines, Donald Trump and the people who are responsible for destroying our planet and hoping that people just stay asleep. That is what this two-hour debate is about, what the next two-hour debate is about and what I would say the two-hour debate after that, with respect to AI, is about too.”
“Today is 30 June. It should go down as the day of the bonfire of our climate targets. In this one swift afternoon, we will make real the Minister's softly saying just after Christmas this year that we would not reach our energy targets. What does that look like in reality? It looks like ramming through measures, with no parliamentary oversight, no proper debate and, in the case of the next Bill we will discuss, no economic impact assessment, which will mean we are not coming close to meeting our climate targets because they are being ignored. We now have this climate change legislation. Every time we raised previously, whether we would reach our climate targets, the answer was not to worry because we have legally binding targets and, therefore, we will meet them because it is the law, and we have to meet the law.”
“We now have the world's first trillionaire, although, because of the share prices, he may not be a trillionaire at this moment, but it speaks to the massive inequality. A wealth tax, a tax on assets of the multimillionaires and billionaires in this country, is one way to begin to tackle this inequality and to put money back into people's pockets.”
“We heard this week from Barnardos that, in Ireland, one of the richest countries in the world, 30% of parents say they do not have enough food to feed their children. A total of 44% of parents - almost one in two parents - said they have to cut back themselves so that their kids have enough to eat. That is at one side of the pole of Irish capitalism. On the other side is the 11 billionaires who are richer than 66% of the population. Eleven people are richer than two thirds of the population put together - 3.5 million people. That is up from nine billionaires in 2024. The richest two billionaires have more wealth than the bottom 50%. That is an Irish expression of a global trend, where billionaire wealth grew three times faster in 2025 than the average annual rate of the previous five years.”
“Eleven Irish billionaires now own more than wealth than two thirds of the population. Half of the population owns less than 10% of the total wealth. It is time for a wealth tax. A wealth tax on the richest 1% could raise €9 billion. At a time when so many people are suffering in one of the richest countries in the world, is it not time to introduce one?”
“Given his previous comments about the rainbow flag, I suspect this is designed to be a deliberate provocation. We will see, however. We will see that many more people will turn out for Pride to stand for equality and respect than those who will turn up to call for hate and discrimination against gay people, trans people, people of colour and immigrants. I believe there is a big majority on our side.”
“A blanket social media ban on under-16s ignores that and lets big tech off the hook as regards cleaning up its act. This is why we introduced a Private Members' Bill months ago to require social media algorithms to be turned off by default. That now needs to happen urgently. It was a bad mistake on the part of the Government to vote it down. We need to turn off the hate against queer people that is being pushed by the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the social media bosses. I will also say a word about the disgusting attempt to create a provocation at Pride this Saturday. A far-right Dublin councillor who is known for promoting racism and anti-immigrant hate is hosting a so-called "march for Ireland", coincidentally just an hour or two after Pride stops.”
“It is not just online. It is in the real world as well, with a big increase of homophobic and transphobic attacks both verbal and physical. All of that hate is being massively amplified by toxic social media algorithms designed to increase the profits of the big tech social media companies by pushing hate, whether homophobia, transphobia, misogyny or racism. Dublin Pride, Belong To, LGBT Ireland and TENI all want recommender algorithms to be turned off by default. They are not calling for under-16s to be banned entirely from social media, which can be a vital lifeline for young queer people who may be socially isolated. A survey of young queer people in Australia before the social media ban found that more than half felt they could more be themselves online than in person.”
“Pride has always been a protest as well as a great party and a celebration, and unfortunately there is still a lot to protest about. The Government's record on trans healthcare is really shocking. It is the worst in the European Union with record waiting lists of up to 18 years for the only public gender clinic. You cannot talk about trans rights when you cannot access trans healthcare. It is eight years since the Government's own review of the Gender Recognition Act recommended non-binary recognition. Still, the Government has done nothing. I am pleased to support Deputy Coppinger who is introducing a Bill to recognise both non-binary and intersex people for the first time. I hope everyone in the House will support it. The rise in hate directed at the queer community by the far right is absolutely frightening. You see it.”
“The topics are bizarre and include bringing back nuclear, navigating a third world war and battlefield technologies. Does the Taoiseach think the Powerscourt Hotel should be facilitating this event?”
“You would not know it from listening to the British commentariat, but a key factor in the downfall of Keir Starmer was his complicity in genocide and, in particular, that infamous clip where he says Israel does have the right to block water, block food and block electricity from Gaza while engaging in very blatant war crimes. Another man entirely complicit in genocide is Peter Thiel, the founder of Palantir, which is deeply integrated into the Israeli military structure and has played a crucial role in the slaughter of huge numbers of Palestinians. Peter Thiel is planning a sinister event in Ireland, organised by Dialog. It is a secretive event involving 200 people, with high-powered people and others with connections to genocide, including US Senator Ted Cruz, Secretary Scott Bessent and the NATO Europe commander.”
“There are thousands of people already at our coasts or on their way to our coasts to swim but there are swimming restrictions in place across all of the closest designated swimming spots south of the city centre. The Half Moon, Seapoint, Dún Laoghaire Baths, Sandycove and the Forty Foot have all been under an eight-day swim restriction notice since Thursday last. The notice warns of a possible increase in bacteria following heavy rainfall. In other words, there is a good chance you are swimming in faeces. The same notice goes up every time there is heavy rain, which means it happens a lot, because the sewage system is overloaded due to decades of underinvestment. The council is advising beach-goers to reduce the risk of illness by avoiding splashing or swallowing water. Tell that to the hundreds of kids swimming at beaches yesterday.”
“Workers at Castolin Eutectic have been out on strike for three days now. They are due to go on strike again next week for five days. This is about eight workers being made redundant. The company agreed to go to the Labour Court but has since refused to implement the Labour Court's recommendation of 1.5 weeks per year of service on top of statutory redundancy. The cost of this to the company is minimal. It will be €30,000 or so. This is a company generating over €300 million annually in sales. It is owned by a venture capitalist company, Paragon Partners, which manages about €2.4 billion. Does the Taoiseach agree that this very wealthy company should at the very least abide by the recommendation of the Labour Court and pay the workers a half-decent redundancy?”
“In the water charges movement we had a slogan, probably the most popular slogan of the movement, which was "No way, we won’t pay". That should be the guiding light here as well in terms of the cost being put on individual homeowners who bear no responsibility whatsoever. It is not their fault; they must not be forced to pay financially, emotionally, psychologically and in the massive disruption to their lives. It is not right for all this to be put on them. It is the State and the private companies who are responsible and they should pay not ordinary homeowners.”
“The underlying issue underpinning all this is that the State is still refusing to take full responsibility for this crisis even though it was the State that created the flawed standards and failed to police them and that came up with flawed remediation schemes which we were warned about at the time. Let us remember this is not just glorious informed hindsight but we had some of these arguments at the time. None of this is the fault of the homeowners yet they are still paying for this every single day. We would not be here debating this today if the ordinary people affected had not got organised, demonstrated and forced the Government kicking and screaming to take action but now we have to say that the action has to be appropriate and measure up to the latest scientific evidence and be adaptable to the latest scientific evidence.”
“If there is still a bad smell around it for prospective buyers, banks and insurance companies, they may face difficulties remortgaging or if they need to sell for whatever reason – if they need to move somewhere else in the country or out of the country or any other reason – they simply cannot sell their house and so they are stuck with this. To add insult to injury, all this can then be passed on to their children after they die, turning what has been a nightmare for one generation into a nightmare for the next. It is an inter-generational nightmare for which responsibility fundamentally rests with the State and the various companies.”
“You have gone through the heartache of your home falling apart and potentially the massive stress of campaigning to fight for some sort of justice for yourself, your family and your local community, you have gone through the hassle of applying for remediation and the disruption of having the house substantially rebuilt and now it could turn out that the foundation is still faulty. In a worst-case scenario the whole thing may need to be demolished and rebuilt again. That is an unthinkable prospect for people. It is enough to drive anyone over the edge. Even if demolition is not needed in future, the fact that uncertainty remains about the long-term durability of the foundation creates massive issues for homeowners. Their remediated house is still not the same as another house.”
“Chris Brough told us about sulphide oxidation, internal sulphate attack, long-term deterioration mechanisms in defective concrete that can affect retained foundations. That is a huge problem because the foundation of your house is exactly that. It is the foundation upon which everything else rests. If the foundation is faulty then your whole house, your whole home and your whole life is insecure - you are literally resting on faulty foundations. No matter what happens above ground, if your foundations are faulty you have a very big problem. Imagine the psychological impact of that for a moment. We have all seen the pictures and heard the stories and you can talk to Deputy Charles Ward about the reality of living in such a house.”
“That does not include one-off housing, which we know there is a lot of in those counties, social housing, business premises or community buildings. We also know that defective concrete is not confined to those four counties and that it is a problem in other counties as well but we do not have sight of the sort of numbers that would be involved there. The 20,000 households is not the whole picture but only part of it. The central problem with IS 465:2026 is that it allows the retention of concrete foundations in certain circumstances - circumstances that may turn out to be based on faulty scientific assumptions. The evidence presented yesterday was absolutely compelling. Geoscientists Professor Paul Dunlop and Dr.”
“The scale of the scandal remains huge. We heard a lot of scientific evidence and detail in the briefing organised by Deputy Charles Ward and the 100% Redress Party yesterday but I have to say the thing that stuck with me most was the evidence suggesting that we are not even at the middle of this scandal yet; we are only in the early phase of this scandal. The broad public outside the counties which have the most affected households up to this point would be shocked to realise that we are only at the start of this process. I think the Government may be shocked to realise this but the evidence presented was very strong. The latest scientific evidence is that 20,000 houses in estates in Donegal, Mayo, Clare and Limerick are affected.”
“It acknowledges that itself by admitting there is uncertainty about the scientific evidence. That uncertainty might not be anyone's fault but it is certainly not the fault of affected households. We know that for a fact. That has to be the guiding principle in this. None of this is the fault of affected households. They should not be the ones to suffer the consequences. Unfortunately, they have been the only ones to suffer any real consequences to this point. Pending the outcome of legal cases, it is not clear Donegal County Council, the National Standards Authority of Ireland or the block suppliers and quarry operators will be made to pay. Cassidy Brothers Concrete Products Limited, Cassidy Brothers Topmix Limited and Cranford Concrete Products Limited are all being taken to court by affected households.”
“I thank them for their generosity with their time and solidarity in assisting us when we were getting the campaign of redress for those affected by apartment and duplex defects off the ground. They had plenty of things on their plate but were willing to come to big meetings and small meetings to talk about their experience and how a campaign could be built on an issue that fundamentally has the same foundations, in the sense of a lax approach to regulation by the Government and various corporate operators operating like cowboys to maximise profit at the expense of ordinary householders. The problem is the remediation scheme we now have may be based on faulty scientific evidence. We heard from Deputy Ward how IS 465:2026 may not stand the test of time.”
“I thank Deputy Ward for tabling this important motion and for his diligent attention to detail on this issue. It is about making sure the Government cannot get away with just burying the issue and saying it is now dealt with - it is definitely not dealt with. This has fundamentally been the approach of the past number of Governments in terms of trying to bury this from the very start of the scandal. The campaign started in 2011. Affected households were fobbed off for nearly ten years, forced to campaign strongly, forced to protest and forced to organise in an extremely impressive way that put huge pressure on the Government before finally getting a remediation scheme that may turn out to be based on faulty scientific evidence. I pay tribute to the campaigners who got us to this point and who continue to push.”
“Do TDs believe that everyone has the right to a fair trial by a jury of their peers or do they support convictions in secret courts by a trio of judges based on the say-so of a senior Garda? If that had been the case with the seven Jobstown not guilty defendants, we would all still be in prison right now. These types of draconian powers are always creeping. One day used against criminals which sounds reasonable, the next used against water charges protesters, Palestine protesters, striking workers or whoever else has been wrongly categorised as criminals or terrorists. Just look at the draconian measures imposed on peaceful protesters classified as terrorists in Britain and think that exactly the same thing could happen here and the Special Criminal Court could be used as a part of that cracking down on civil liberties.”
“The Minister of State has already told us that the only alternative to the Special Criminal Court is a slightly reformed and rebranded non-jury court. Shamefully, the vast majority of the Opposition, including Sinn Féin, is going along with that too, and supporting the idea of making non-jury courts permanent forever. The minority of the independent review group, which not surprisingly was a minority made-up of human rights experts, rightly saw no need for special, non-jury courts. The vast majority of democracies around the world see no need for them either. That is why I urge for a vote to be called on these motions every single year. People have a right to know where the Members of this House stand on fundamental questions of civil liberties.”
“Most of the rest of the Opposition, including those on the left, also engage every year in this, the lowest form of respectability politics, afraid they are going to look bad if they defend the basic right to a fair trial by a jury of one’s peers, even though every domestic and international human rights organisation from the Irish Council of Civil Liberties to Amnesty International, the State’s own Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the United Nations unanimously oppose the Special Criminal Court. The point of civil liberties is not so much to defend the rights of people we agree with, but to defend the rights of those we do not. The Minister said last year we would be here again in a year’s time. Are we going to be here again next year? How much longer is this farce going to continue?”
“Fair play to them. Here we go again with another one of these annual farces we have in this place. However, this one is pretty important. It is the nodding through of abolishing the fundamental human right to a fair trial by the Government and the vast majority of the Opposition. It is incredible that we do this on a yearly basis. Shamefully, it is again going to include Sinn Féin. For years, Sinn Féin has been using the promise of a slight reform of this diplock court as an excuse for not opposing it, after decades of correctly being against it. How much longer can Sinn Féin keep that up? The Government has been saying it needs these so-called emergency powers for 54 years now, so presumably this can go on forever.”
“In the 570 plus days since the application for its use in Ireland was lodged, many in the community have lost the ability to stand upright, walk, feed or dress themselves and to speak clearly. Many have lost all hope. Time is ticking. We need urgent movement on Skyclarys and the other orphan drugs that have not been approved in our system.”
“who will not be of an age to benefit from it - I think you need to be six - that support is given in the meantime - for example, support from the HSE with splints to ensure their muscles do not get weaker while waiting for access. I hope access is granted for whoever needs it as soon possible. On Friedreich's ataxia Skyclarys is the only drug that has been shown to slow the disease. It was approved by the EMA and is available in other European countries. I will quote from a constituent: The NCPE issued a harsh verdict for Skyclarys on 17 December 2025. While I understand the HSE is still in discussions with the manufacturer, the delay is costing my niece time to slow this cruel disease. It is already heartbreaking watching her fade even though a drug that works exists but is out of reach.”
“In the vast majority of research, money is going into marketing, research into products with massive markets already and therefore they are just variations on drugs to keep patents ongoing. There is very little in prioritising people's needs and rare diseases. Where there are developments, pharmaceutical companies are holding out to get as much money as they possibly can for them. We need a very different sort of pharmaceutical sector in public ownership in the public interest. I welcome the recommendation of the HSE drug group to approve givinostat for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. I add a request for children like A.J.”
“I express solidarity with the many people and many children suffering from rare diseases in Ireland. I pay tribute to the many who have to speak out publicly about what they and their families are going through to bring pressure on the Government to approve various medicines, people like Archie Ennis and A.J. Slevin. There are far too many and we should not have to know about their stories. It speaks to something very wrong in how our society, the economy and the pharmaceutical sector are organised. I recently read about research done in France which showed the majority of new medicines developed offer no therapeutic benefit or advancement and about 25% represent real therapeutic advancements.”
“We are not charging the vehicles. The NTA told the Committee of Public Accounts that we are not charging them because the data centres are using all the power. We have electric buses that are sitting there not being charged.”
“I refer to the briefing note prepared for the Government's major project governance oversight group, which warned that there is insufficient power in the ESB network to support DART+. The target is 100%, and we need ten times more power. Where will that come from?”
“The fundamental point the Minister of State is missing is that the Government is choosing to delay investment in public transport against the advice of Climate Change Advisory Council. That is a fact.”
“That is not meeting our climate change targets. Our legally binding climate change targets are set out. They state that we have to reduce emissions in this sector or that sector by certain amounts. The Climate Change Advisory Council review states, "The sector has likely exceeded its first sectoral emissions ceiling (2021–2025) and is projected to exceed its second (2026–2030)." The Government is not meeting its climate targets. It is not coming anywhere close to meeting its climate targets. It is trying to lull people to sleep by saying things that are inaccurate such as, for example, that we are meeting our climate change targets.”
“The Council believes that allocation of funding to advance both projects should be expedited and strongly recommends that the Government commit funding to these projects in Budget 2027. Is the Government going to do that? Why is this delay taking place? The Government cannot blame planning or funds. Is it because of grid issues? Data centres are effectively using up all of the power in the greater Dublin area.”