I am glad to get the opportunity to talk on this topic, even though I have only a couple of minutes. I could talk for a whole day about it. I do not agree with many people here. The climate is changing but the climate has always changed. It is not man-made. We are not causing it here on this Earth. The climate changed back over the centuries, and those are the facts. History will show that to us at different times. We had periods of severe cold and severe rain. A famine in the 1740s was caused by two years of incessant rain, when one third of our population and most of our cattle and sheep died. If we all walked off the island of Ireland today, it would only mean a difference of 0.13% of 1% in the whole worldwide context. That is another fact. With all these ideas that the Government has about the climate, I honestly say that no human being here can have any effect in changing the climate and never will. We have the highest ESB charges now simply because we are told we cannot buy turf or burn fossil fuels, yet Germany has opened two new coalmines. It is in Europe as well. I wonder what the Minister will say about that. In 2019, there was a vote here on the targets for 2030. I believe I was the only TD who voted against those targets at that time because I knew then, as I know now, what it would mean to hard-working people. It would put pressure on them financially. This is what the Government is trying to do now in every sector because of climate change. Massive amounts of taxpayers' money are being spent to address this issue, but it will fail because it is not possible to change the weather. No matter what we do here, we do not have the power to change the weather. We cannot do lesser things or things closer to home or to the needs of the people. We cannot achieve those things. I will just mention one thing. We do not have enough houses for the number of people coming into the country and the way our population is exploding. Then there is this carbon tax. People are being charged massive amounts of carbon tax. Farmers should be completely exempt because they are sequestering more carbon than they are emitting. Growing grass sequesters carbon. They are planting hedges and trees, and they are sequestering more carbon.

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They are still being charged carbon tax. They are using AdBlue. They are doing everything possible and yet the Government is charging them carbon tax.

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You will not change the weather. It would be too late for that.

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