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 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. 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. Another outrageous feature of what is being proposed is the centralising of decision-making about removing the cap outright into one person, namely, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, the Minister. Unlimited expansion of Dublin Airport is effectively promised here. The Minister has previously referred to 60 million passengers a year, a number almost double the current cap. The Minister has done no evaluation of the climate or environmental implications this will lead to. He has done no evaluation of the economic, social and health costs of just letting Dublin Airport rip at the behest of Michael O'Leary. No climate or biodiversity experts were consulted by the Minister. The excellent group Children's Rights Over Flights tried to meet the Minister. There were numerous requests but no chance to meet him. There was no consideration of children's rights, including their right to a stable climate, even as very young children died from extreme heat in France, and local opposition to the airport for health, noise and environmental reasons was ignored, as was the recommendation of the committee after pre-legislative scrutiny stage "that meaningful engagement is undertaken by the daa with local communities to mitigate the impact of noise from the north runway." No such thing has taken place. Let the Minister be in no doubt that what is happening is that the profits of the likes of Michael O'Leary, Ryanair and the very big aviation corporations are being put before children's health. To avoid a proper light being shone on that, a proper debate being held on what is going on and a proper discussion of the various amendments we have, the Government just rams it all through, sandwiches it all together and does it in two hours. Presumably, Michael O'Leary would be very happy.

Sentiment score: -0.10