We are very proud in Ireland of building up electrification at a time when our country had limited resources. It is a great story of our people. That led to us having the cheapest electricity in Europe. This was infrastructure and a resource that belonged to our people. Whenever the privatisation agenda was pushed by the European Union, Ireland was at the top of the queue to privatise what was publicly-owned infrastructure. That is fundamentally the reason today our workers, families and small businesses are being crippled with electricity prices. It is the failure historically of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to protect a precious national resource we had built up. We just handed it away, and that is the price that we pay today. This is the other issue. I heard the Taoiseach talking about wind energy. For God’s sake, does he ever talk to anybody in County Donegal? We have wind farms all across Donegal and half of them remain dormant because the electricity infrastructure is not there. There is no point talking about solar and wind energy independence and reducing our prices when we are allowing these wind farms to remain dormant and are not working or functioning because we do not have the electricity infrastructure. This is failure after failure. Our people need to know the reason we have the most expensive electricity in Europe is the historic failures of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael because they are working closely with industry and huge profit-makers rather than defending the public interests of their people.
Sentiment score: 0.10