Paul Nicholas Gogarty
Dublin Mid-West · Independent · Ireland
“As I have mentioned in the House before, if a border poll passes by 52% to 48%, the legal threshold of the Good Friday Agreement is met but the social consensus is not and moving 800,000 citizens into a new state against their explicit, democratic will does risk causing civil unrest.”
“We also have other gaps that are much smaller, like a ten-year phased transition, reducing the net annual cost to between €2.5 billion and €3 billion. We then had the middle figure of about €11 billion. We actually do not know how much it is going to cost but we do know it is going to cost something.”
“For example, adopting a single currency, getting rid of the exchange rate volatility and the transaction costs for cross-Border businesses are all advantages.”
“I would be loath to call a border poll right now because of the risks associated with that, but if a border poll did occur, the State would have to be prepared for the huge structural disruptions that would follow, so we have to start working now - that is why this debate is welcome - without arrogantly presuming it is going to become a r…”
“I have been listening to this debate in my office since Deputy Currie started her contribution. I always follow these debates on Irish unity with interest as someone who wants to see a united Ireland by consent.”
“Some have been mentioned in this House, such as a devolved regional assembly in Stormont to preserve local governance for the unionist community, a shared bill of rights protecting the dual Irish-British citizenship, and re-evaluating our relationship with the Commonwealth.”
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“Complementary legislation is essential to protect public health and meet our obligations. In summary, if we want to succeed, we have to match enforcement powers with enforcement capacity. We have to match the regulations with support for households and businesses. The legislation has to be strong enough to do that. We need complementary supports. In general terms, I welcome the Bill.”
“The big-ticket companies are addressed, but some smaller sites fall through the cracks. We need to strengthen oversight and improve monitoring technology. While the Bill strengthens enforcement on solid fuels, we have to have parallel action on transport and industry. I do not have time to go into the massive investment required in electric vehicles and giving people the ability to charge electric vehicles outside of their homes or adjacent to them using a domestic tariff. The more electric vehicles are on the road, the less pollution we would have. It is an absolute no-brainer. It is also a no-brainer in terms of rising fuel costs if we can get homegrown renewable energy stored properly and converted to green hydrogen in some cases. I welcome the Bill. It is just one Bill but important legislation.”
“The air quality in Ireland 2023 report points out that alongside solid fuel burning, transport emissions and industrial activity are major contributors of harmful pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and fine particulates. Vehicle emissions, in particular from diesel cars, vans and heavy duty vehicles, are well known as a source of urban air pollution. Localised hotspots in urban areas need to be diminished near busy roads. I am thinking of the M50, N4, and N7, which fall outside the scope of the Bill. If we are serious about clean air, we need complementary legislation that addresses the issues. Low-emission zones, stronger standards overall and better investment in electric vehicles and public transport alternatives are broad issues. While not related to the Bill, smaller industrial and commercial sites are another area.”
“Other countries have a hybrid model whereby local authorities carry out the day-to-day enforcement and a national inspectorate supports investigations and ensures consistency in enforcement and compliance. This might be valuable for councils like south Dublin where the EPA audits have identified the capacity challenges I mentioned. We should have better annual public reporting by local authorities of inspection fines, compliance rates and enforcement outcomes to compare by local authority on an annualised basis. While the Bill is a welcome and necessary step in tackling pollution from mainly solid fuels, we cannot ignore the fact that air quality in Ireland is not just damaged by home heating alone.”
“If we want households to move away from smokey fuels, we must make cleaner alternatives accessible. We also need supports for businesses impacted by the Bill. We need public information campaigns that talk about the damage caused by air pollution. On weather apps, I have often seen that the air quality in some rural areas is worse than in Dublin because of the burning of certain types of smokey fuel. We need to show how that has a direct impact on people's health. The EPA's annual air quality reports highlight the need for greater public awareness, especially in areas where pollution spikes in the winter. We should also consider establishing an enforcement support unit.”
“The Bill should be accompanied by a comprehensive package of measures that, in fairness, are already directly relevant to the latest fuel crisis. We are dealing with an emergency situation right now. We had a debate on the motion of confidence where the Government was, rightly, accused of not responding quickly enough and not doing enough. In the medium term, we need proper strategies in place to help people reduce their fuel bills and move on to alternatives. We need expanded retrofitting and heating system supports, targeted in particular at those at risk of fuel poverty. The warmer homes scheme national retrofit programme is important. The SEAI progress report shows, unfortunately, that demand exceeds capacity and waiting times are way too long.”
“If penalties are lower than the profit margins associated with selling non-compliant fuels, it is pointless legislation. Enforcement data from the EPA shows that repeat non-compliance is an ongoing challenge, so agencies have to get real teeth. Enforcement is only one side of the equation. As my colleagues referenced, the other angle is affordability and practical support for our hard-pressed systems. The SEAI national heat study in 2022 pointed out that many households, in particular lower income households, relied on solid fuels because they had a lack of affordable alternatives. This is why retrofitting for public housing is so important. If we strengthen enforcement without strengthening the supports, all we are doing is placing a further burden on those least able to absorb it.”
“Such work is pointless without staff. The Bill is not related to litter wardens, but it is related to enforcement. South Dublin is not alone, in fairness. The EPA has showed a pattern of staffing capacity constraints across multiple local authorities. That is why the Bill needs to be strengthened. I mentioned staffing and training. IT systems and inspection capacity are also necessary. Without all of these things, the Bill will be a paper tiger. In that context, I want to emphasise the need to revisit the level of fines and what constitutes an effective deterrent. The Bill is good on emphasising proportionate penalties and one can understand that at one level. However, our State has a history of non-compliance on a range of issues. We have to ensure that the fines are meaningful enough to deter illegal fuel sales.”
“The best example is in my constituency, where the EPA's 2022 local authority environmental enforcement performance report, published in 2023, reported on various local authorities. Regarding my home area of South Dublin County Council, the EPA found that while the council ticked a lot of the boxes and met the required standards in many areas, it also identified specific weaknesses that were directly related to the Bill, including a reliance on an archaic and ageing compliant management system, backlogs of open environmental cases and the need for improvements in the enforcement of solid fuel regulations. The regulations bit I get. The staffing and training levels are different issues. They will show whether the Bill will work in practice. I understand there are five litter wardens in south Dublin trying to police the area.”
“It gives local authorities new powers for fixed payment and compliance notices, enhanced authority to regulate the sale and distribution of solid fuels and the ability to seize non-compliant products. All of that is positive on paper. As an Opposition TD who wants to be constructive rather than overtly critical, though, I also want to point out that the road to hell is paved with good intentions in so many pieces of legislation. We can have all of the strong wording we like, but if we want the Bill to deliver cleaner air and healthier communities and society, we must ensure the enforcement system is fit for purpose. The evidence shows that, right now, the capacity is uneven, in some cases less than optimal, and under real strain.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Air Pollution (Amendment) Bill 2025. This is legislation we have been promised for a fair couple of years and attempts to respond to a very real public health challenge that often does not get as much attention as it should. It also updates a framework that we have not kept pace with in terms of the scale of the problem across the country. The EPA air quality in Ireland 2023 report reminds us that air pollution, according to those figures, causes an estimated 1,700 premature deaths every year, needless and preventable deaths as others in the Chamber have outlined. Our legislation is a little bit archaic at this stage. The Bill strengthens the Air Pollution Act 1987 and modernises, on paper, enforcement in line with the commitments set out in the 2023 national clean air strategy.”
“For someone like me who lives the green lifestyle, is vegan, etc., the obvious reality is that people need to have access to cars. We have to revisit this issue and ensure that there is some form of parking spaces are designated for people in these areas.”
“The council is only implementing the legislation it is told to implement. When I tried to get a major department store into the Adamstown SDZ, council officials refused and said it would upset the retail hierarchy because Tallaght and Liffey Valley are the two main retail centres. Therefore, anyone living in Adamstown has to go to Liffey Valley. Buses on the L51 and L52 routes do not turn up half of the time, so people are going to have to drive to do a proper shop. Unfortunately, they cannot get the train to Liffey Valley. These are the kind of real-time issues that arise. People in the social houses at the Crossings in Adamstown are being told they have no parking spaces. We have seen situations where people are parking on footpaths and in bus lanes.”
“A recent report from the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland, SCSI, confirms that three out of four owners' management companies, OMCs, have inadequate sinking funds for long-term repairs. I have two questions. First, will the Government immediately review the parking ratios in Clonburris and Adamstown SDZs to facilitate overspill parking spaces? We cannot build car-free developments while the National Transport Authority admits that we do not have sufficient corridors. Second, will the Government finally complete the transfer of the Multi-Unit Developments Act to the Department of housing so we can have a regulator with teeth and stop the type of two-tier citizenship whereby homeowners are forced to pay for their own roads, lights and security on top of record property taxes?”
“Reports from March show that the Connolly-Adamstown rail line is at full capacity, with over 200 people boarding at single stops and commuters literally pinned to the doors. We know that the DART+ South West is promised. In Citywest and Kilcarbery, for example, residents have been forced into rotational parking apps that limit parking to three days. People can book it in advance. This causes issues because people who have designated spaces are seeing other people park in their spaces. Rented houses in which there are three people working in jobs that require them to travel means that vans are parked all over the place. A lot of the time, the owners feel that they do not have any other choice. The other issue is the skyrocketing service charges in some Dublin estates, which have increased by more than 53%.”
“There is often fewer than one space per unit on the basis of the fantasy that our public transport is already world class. As we know, it is not. There is absolute chaos in many estates in Adamstown central, Seven Mills, Kilcarbery and Citywest. Traffic index data from January confirms that Dublin is the third most congested city in the world. Residents in the SDZs are at the centre of this gridlock. It might be argued that it is counterintuitive to call for more car parking spaces, but there is a difference between owning and using a car. We should by all means discourage car use, but with a lack of public transport, people do not have the ability to get from A to B. They are often stuck because public transport in their areas is not yet a viable alternative.”
“I want to spend some time addressing an issue I have referenced before, namely the growing crisis of so-called parking wars and the service charge-related instability that is turning home ownership into a nightmare in many of our new communities. I give the examples of the Clonburris and Adamstown strategic development zones, SDZs, in my constituency, with which my independent colleague Councillor Helen Farrell, who I welcome to the Public Gallery, will be all too familiar, as will the Minister of State, Deputy Emer Higgins. There are other large-scale developments in respect of which people were sold the promise of sustainable living but, instead, residents who can afford to pay for housing or those offered places on choice-based letting, end up being trapped in a planning vacuum. The guidelines have slashed parking ratios to the bone.”
“It might be laborious for the Minister of State's advisers and for him but we should go through everything step by step and amendment by amendment over a period of hours and then come to the vote. At least we could say the House went through it the way it should have. I do not believe that it has gone through it the way it should have.”
“I agree with the Minister of State on a lot of aspects but I want a response tonight as to why, given that the Supreme Court put it in the Minister of State's hands to go through this legislation with a fine-tooth comb so the concerns of the courts were reflected through the legislation, the legislation is not being allowed to have as long as is possible. We have had much longer debates on other legislation. As an Independent I will not say I have specific expertise because I cover a wide range of areas, but there are spokespersons here who are particularly focused on tabling amendments and want to have those amendments discussed. I wanted to see them discussed because I was listening to debate all night before I came down here. It is totally unfair to the people of Ireland not to be seen to have this scrutiny.”
“On balance, following Mark Carney's speech a few months ago, and I reiterated it when the Canadian ambassador was here when we gave our commiserations for the tragedy that had recently happened there, we have to collectively get together in this new type of world where alliances are what will help small- and medium-sized countries. Ireland is only strong as part of its EU membership. Canada and the EU collectively are only strong by working together in a world where we cannot rely on historic partners. In this context, maybe five years ago the risk might have been judged to have been greater but now there is a trade-off. There is a certain level of risk. The Minister of State is doing his best to go through why these risks are overstated by members of the Opposition and civic groups, and maybe they are.”
“The nub of the issue is that the Bill is before the House because of a Supreme Court decision and the Costello judgment. We are going to have differences of opinion on it. There was a 4:3 split in the judgment but a 6:1 majority said that while it is unconstitutional, it does not require a referendum because the State can change Irish law to put in place strict safeguards to make sure Irish sovereignty and EU sovereignty are protected in the context of the Bill. This is why we have the arbitration amendment in section 25. The fundamental point, as I said earlier, is that it is a trade-off.”
“We could have had several more hours of discussion and proper amendments debated. The Government has the numbers anyway and, like I said, there is a trade-off here, but I will not be voting for this as is because it has not been given the proper scrutiny it deserves by this House.”
“States still have the right to amend policy on environmental matters, consumer protection, public health and labour laws. Threats will happen and there is always the risk of a chilling effect but the EU is starting to take on the IT companies and it is through the EU we shout down these threats. However, I am concerned about the lack of proper Oireachtas scrutiny on Committee and Report Stages. We had the confidence motion on Tuesday where the anger of ordinary people was expressed in a robust way by Deputies on this side of the House. The Government was accused of being out of touch and not listening to the people. A day later, after having a good Second Stage debate on CETA, we scheduled statements on football. I am a football fan and it was a great debate, which I welcomed, but it could have been deferred for another week.”
“The ICS will have open hearings, independent decision-making processes, judges appointed who cannot engage in outside activities and some, admittedly limited, facility for NGOs, civil society, trade unions, etc. It is a trade-off some will hate and others will reluctantly see as necessary. EU companies, as has been mentioned, can sue Canadian companies and Canadian companies can sue EU companies so while Ireland can be sued without recourse to Irish courts, the action cannot be spurious and must show a company has been affected detrimentally in some way because of a breach of the agreement. We might not like it but companies have a right to be compensated for loss of expected earnings and the threat is overemphasised because making such amendments would not in itself be in breach of the agreement.”
“With the malevolent Trump Administration, we need to closer links with Canada through the EU and this legislation is clearly facilitating what is essentially a trade-off with pluses and minuses. The question is not about whether we are losing sovereignty but whether sovereignty is worth giving up in certain situations, and I believe it is. We have agreed to pool sovereignty at EU level in multiple areas. The Supreme Court decision stated CETA created a parallel system of justice but it did not say the ICS was unconstitutional and required a referendum. Instead it suggested amending legislation would be needed to meet the threshold and that is the Bill before us. I said on Second Stage it struck a reasonable balance to meet the threshold so I do not have a problem with it. The old-style ISDS system has been improved in the ICS.”
“There is one in Adamstown where there are two soccer pitches and a GAA pitch across and so many people get great use out of that. Japan is one of the world leaders in pitches that are for the more casual type of sport. We need to encourage people to get involved in sport at all levels, especially promoting sport for women. Women have lacked basic toilets in so many clubs, even at elite level, for many years. That type of investment needs to be redoubled. I note the FAI has a new 2026-2029 strategy and it is to be hoped the old days of financial mismanagement have passed by. We need a combination of national funding for the elite side of things and I pay tribute to the women's team. I hope they repeat the double against Poland this weekend and in relation to the men's team, but we need to keep investing in sport.”
“Unfortunately, for various reasons I will not get into, Sinn Féin, People Before Profit, the Labour Party and the Social Democrats voted down motions to move housing towards the train station, go up a level or two and create space for all-weather pitches. That did not happen. It was appealed to An Coimisiún Pleanála which said not to worry, all of these things will come. Through successive governments, these things have not come and they are not going to come. South Dublin County Council has one shared GAA, rugby and soccer AstroTurf pitch in the Clonburris SDZ and a couple of smaller, across the pitch facilities for a population that could be in excess of 25,000. That is not sufficient. We have to start looking at all-weather pitches or properly drained grass pitches. There will have to be multi-use for different sports.”
“You might say it is snowy or icy in Iceland but it rains incessantly in Ireland. With climate change, we need to revisit our policy towards grade 3 and 4 AstroTurf pitches and the elite level ones. There are quite a number of clubs in my constituency. I will not try to mention them all, but on the men's side the biggest one is Lucan United and on the women's side it is Peamount United. They are both fantastic clubs and Lucan United will be playing in the new FAI national league shortly and I wish them all the best. One thing Lucan United mentioned directly to me as an elected representative is the shortage of all-weather pitches for youngsters coming up. It is impacting the GAA as well. During the Clonburris SDZ debate, I pointed that out.”
“I am a great sports fan. I play GAA. I play five-a-side, six-a-side and eight-a-side in Celbridge and Leixlip. Some might have seen me with a crutch in here which I lent to another Deputy. Of course, some rag put it all over social media. The reason I had the crutch in the first place is because my knee is damaged from playing eight-a-side last Friday when I went in full belt in a tackle and someone's knee went through the side of my knee. I would do it 100 times over to be able to play football. That is what so many men, women, boys and girls get so much enjoyment out of. Long may it continue. I was playing on an AstroTurf pitch and that is the first point I want to get to: the shortage of AstroTurf facilities around the country. You could compare it with Iceland, which has top class indoor and outdoor facilities.”
“It is an existential crisis for the people of Ireland to be so dependent on foreign actors to heat our homes. We need to get real and start putting in that long-term investment.”
“We have had arguments on different sides of the House about protecting the most vulnerable and where the money should go. The renewables debate is a wartime situation because we are so dependent on fossil fuel imports. The next crisis down the road is going to result in more pain for people. We need to be looking at a wartime situation where we are putting our windfall assets into upgrading the grid and investing in offshore wind, tidal energy, solar and other capacity so that we are net exporters of energy through battery storage and green hydrogen. I am going to say this 50 more times during the lifetime of this Dáil, but we are not actually doing that. We are not ramping up. The Ukrainians could ramp up drone technology because it was an existential crisis for them.”
“We are moving the focus in the debate towards solutions for people to reduce their energy bills. I welcome this motion. As I said before, we need to be moving towards giving better grants for solar in households, including in the very short term plug-in solar. You can now go into Lidl in the UK and get some of these, which would cut your bills straight away. The focus of much of the debate has been on the short-term pressure and how the Government did not respond enough or fast enough to it. We have said that. I first referenced Ronald Reagan's term "voodoo economics" in 2002, talking about the bubble. I said bubble bubble would lead to toil and trouble, and it actually did with the demise of the Celtic tiger. Money does not fall off trees. You only have a certain amount of revenue coming in and you have to work within those constraints.”
“They have self-appointed leaders, including the one I mentioned earlier who said he did not care if a woman was raped. These are the nut jobs who were calling themselves the leaders of the people. We have to listen directly to the people and to respond to them and be seen to respond. Otherwise, these nut jobs will jump on any bandwagon and try to make hay while the sun shines.”
“The Great Satan, as the Iranians would say, is Trump, because Trump is the one who caused this whole mess and put us into this crisis. We have seen fuel protests throughout Europe and elsewhere. We have to listen to our population and give them the help they need as quickly as possible. That is why the motion of no confidence arose. People were of the view that the pain they were feeling was not being responded to or not being responded to quickly enough. Maybe the Government should have gone out on some of the protests and engaged with people. I want to call out the fact, as others have said, that there were so many disorganised groupings involved. Some of them are far right. Some of them are conspiracy theorists, climate change deniers and Trump supporters.”
“I want to follow up on what Deputy Healy said. Our Government obviously has to maintain diplomatic relations with the Trump Administration, but we need to be a good bit stronger in highlighting this illegal war. In this Chamber in January, I asked the Government to do more in terms of the vile, oppressive theocracy in Iran and how it has stamped on its own people and executed so many. What Trump and Netanyahu have done will set cause of the freedom of the Iranian people back for a considerable period. They deserve a place in hell for that. I said in the earlier debate that those in government are not the devils in this issue, just as those in opposition are not the angels. Sometimes, we play politics and are populist.”
“This issue may last for six or 12 months and the Government must be seen to respond. It won the confidence vote but still has a responsibility because people out there are hurting.”
“They seem to think you can suddenly scrap the excise duty and the carbon tax, and everything is going to be hunky-dory and you are still going to have money to spend for vulnerable people where it is needed. I have been critical of the Government for the apartments tax break that could have gone to help people with disabilities and make their cost of living more manageable but it is within the confines of trying to be fiscally responsible. People are being hit by an international conflict caused by Trump and Netanyahu. It is not of the Government's creation. It is also restricted by certain EU regulations. However, I still think that in the short term, over the next six months, the Government must respond quicker and put in the measures that will bring prices back to the level they were.”
“I will be supporting these resolutions. It is constructive to do so. I said in a contribution a few weeks ago that the Government was not acting fast enough, which was fair comment. It has responded this time, although some will say it has not responded sufficiently, and that is also fair comment. The Government might disagree. I agree with the Government about the overall picture. There is only a set amount of revenue. The pharmaceutical industry and IT windfall is not going to last forever so the Government needs a broad tax base, despite what is said by some of the self-appointed leaders. Some of the misogynistic, criminally convicted, rape-endorsing, tax-defaulting so-called appointed leaders are jumping on the backs of the ordinary people who have real concerns.”
“I said a few weeks ago that more was needed to be help people suffering to an even greater extent during the current cost-of-living and fuel crisis, caused by Trump and Netanyahu. We know the Government did not cause the problem but it needed to listen to the people faster and be part of rapid, meaningful, short-term solutions. If the Government survives this vote I will comment on some of the wider issues in later debates, but I want to put these views on the record in a respectful way. The Tánaiste and his colleagues are not the devil and the Opposition are no angels but, to be clear, the Government has not responded quickly enough or gone far enough.”
“It is no surprise to hear me say that I will not be voting confidence in this Government. As I said just after the election, the Government's the programme for Government and the groups it did deals with to keep it in power did not inspire any confidence or show any vision. It's choices during the last budget favoured wealthy developers, left vulnerable people in the lurch and the Government's lack of urgency on the need to ramp up our energy security has been frustrating. People in my constituency cannot get affordable homes and those that do are consigned to congested areas with no facilities, no infrastructure, no reliable public transport services and many of them are now fighting for basic parking spaces.”
“I have said that. There is a pressure on housing and we need to address it. However, we will not address it by looking at making it harder for vulnerable people coming here from Ukraine, Syria, Sudan and other conflict zones. We have to protect those people while at the same time getting tougher on those who, nice as they may be, are economic migrants seeking a better way of life. That should be done through the work permit system. I welcome the extension to 2027. It is the right thing to do.”
“There are also people who are fleeing war and persecution in other parts of the world. We have seen the conflict in Syria and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. These sorts of people also need our ongoing support. We have obligations and we should live up to them. I take on board what has been said about the pressures the housing crisis is putting on people. With regard to my constituency, 20% of software companies are employing people from overseas in non-essential jobs. These are all high-paid jobs. These people want to locate in the suburbs because that is where the software companies are. We need to look again at our policy as to where software and pharmaceutical companies locate. They should be in the golden triangle between Athlone, Mullingar and Tullamore. If people are commuting, they should be heading westwards rather than eastwards.”
“People in this country who were free to come to Ireland because they are EU citizens have abused our welcome. I know there is free movement, but there are certain criteria in that regard. If the Minister is talking about sending people out of Ireland, I would be thinking about the scammers who threw a man out of a taxi or the individual who ejaculated upon a woman on the Luas. Are these sorts of people who are being told after they get a sentence - if they get a sentence - that they are no longer welcome in this country? Are they being told to get out and stay out? They are the sorts of people who should not be in this country. We should be seen to be extremely tough on them. However, the Ukrainians who are fleeing an ongoing war need our continued support.”
“It is tied into the Ukrainian side of things purely because of the number of people who will need accommodation. Anyone granted refugee status in this country needs accommodation. However, I reiterate that the vast majority of those coming into Ireland seeking international protection have been found on appeal to be economic migrants. We do have certain areas of work where people from abroad can make a valuable contribution, but the asylum process is not the way to go through it. We need to speed up people coming in and then going back out again. We need a moratorium for people who have been here for a long time, especially children because it is inhumane to send them back after a prolonged period. I am saying that in the knowledge that there are people in this country who have abused our welcome.”
“However, when looked at in an holistic way, abolishing the ARP will put more people under pressure and put more pressure on the housing market. In essence, a lot of the properties here are providing a cheap way of accommodating those who need help. I recognise no new properties are being brought into it, so it is a balance. On the wider level, under UN conventions we have recognised consistently our need to protect those who are fleeing from persecution from elsewhere. Despite a small minority in this House and a vocal minority outside this House, we have lived up to our obligations to provide refuge to those coming here. The Minister said that we need to tighten up the process. I fully support that and the quicker processing of claims, within the six-month period.”
“We have to differentiate between those who need our help and those who do not. We have made a commitment to the Ukrainian people, some of it because we are not supplying weaponry as a militarily neutral country to help the Ukrainians in their fight against the illegal Russian invasion and onslaught that has killed so many of their people. We have made a commitment and if we make a commitment, we have to continue to follow through with it. That is why I welcome the extension until 2027. The Irish Red Cross in its previous work had highlighted that a lot of the properties coming in under the ARP would not have been put onto the rental market and that remains the case. That does not mean that there are not some properties that would otherwise be rented out.”
“We have to say that by 2035 we will double the volume of renewables and storage. We have to look at private wires. We have to look at grid improvements, but we are not. We are just doing little incremental bits, which is not enough in the context of the prices that people have to pay at home but also our long-term contribution to the sustainability of the planet. We need to get real. I fully support measures, and I want to double the measures being introduced in the short term to help people. We have to start putting in the investment that will pay back in a very short period of time on the grid.”
“The most effective climate measure is a just transition by making sure that we have alternatives to importing fossil fuels and that people can heat their homes from home-grown production, be it from green hydrogen from excess electricity production, better insulated housing or public transport powered by hydrogen, electricity produced at home or biofuels. I have said this 100 times and I will say it 100 times more. We have the potential to be a net exporter of energy rather than an importer of €6 billion plus, as we are. That is going to cut costs for our people. With the surpluses we have, we need to support people in the short term when they are getting these price hikes, but in the short to medium term, we need a massive investment in retrofitting and home-grown energy. It is too long to spread it out.”
“We need to have more measures whereby if a person is going to save €800 in a year, those €800 savings could go to the cost of their retrofit, even if it is over a 30-year period. We have to be creative about this. The bigger picture is the fact that our planet is warming at an exponential rate. We are going to face massive costs and massive increases in the costs of living if we do not something. Obviously, that is a collective global cost. While little old Ireland is is per capita a high contributor, we are relatively small in the big picture, so we need to move at EU level. We also need to get the likes of Trump out of power, but that is up to the American people. We have to look at our climate measures.”
“In that context, I welcome the suspension of the NORA levy, but we need to do more on the excise duties in the short term. In the medium term, we have to move away from our addiction to fossil fuels. As I have said to the Tánaiste, the Taoiseach and now the Minister of State, it is happening way too slowly. Looking to 2040 and 2050 is simply not sufficient. We should be treating it like a wartime situation and moving at a rapid pace. There are people in local authority houses who are crying out for insulation and proper air handling systems that will reduce their fuel costs. That could be done a lot faster than is happening. The types of grants out there are insufficient to encourage people to move away.”