We have been a long time talking about targets in this House and we are way off our game. To be honest, I have spoken quite a lot about Barryroe oil field and fossil fuels since I came into the Dáil, and I often got Deputies sitting to my right screaming and roaring back at me. After the past two weeks, they now know that we cannot do without fossil fuels. Common sense has prevailed. In fairness, I will be honest that I need education as well. There is no point in me just shouting that fossil fuels are the way forward and moving on. That is ridiculous too, but I always felt that Barryroe should have been explored because it could have been a chance to fund renewables, the renewables that we promised this nation when I came into the Dáil ten years ago and that have not been delivered. It is the only way forward. We should sit down and put together a cross-party group of people with maybe extreme views on every side, as long as they would not be getting overly angry with each other, to see if they could come to a consensus in the middle because there is a middle ground there somewhere. We do have to look after the environment, and I am big into that. However, it should not come at a price and it is coming at a huge price to the people of rural Ireland with the carbon tax. Carbon tax hits rural people 99% more than anybody else. Those are the facts. People can be in denial and they can say this or that. We know the mindset within Fine Gael. Leo Varadkar, the former leader of Fine Gael, has proven it this week when he decimated rural people and agriculture. It was an absolute disgrace. That was his mindset the whole time and he is now coming clean. He did not say that when he was below at the ploughing championships. He did not say that when he was canvassing around rural places. He told us we were great people. We now find out that Fine Gael does not like farmers or rural people at all. The Minister of State should read his statement. It was not good enough.

Sentiment score: 0.08

He should at least apologise to the people of this country because he hurt people, and he does not need to do that. He is a former leader. He needs to advise maybe and not attack the ordinary people. There are over 300,000 people in energy poverty. How can we create a solution to this? Is it solar panels? The Green Party had to take the hit on this big time because it was in government. To run a home on solar power, and I have talked to experts about this, homeowners need up to €20,000 and they get a grant of €1,800. That is a pittance. The Government needs to encourage people to put solar panels up on sheds, on the roofs of houses and maybe on lawns. It needs to encourage people away from having to use electricity towards using their own power. That was where the Green Party should have come in and it failed to do all this. All it wanted to do was apply the carbon tax so it could double the number of cycleways up and down the country. I was canvassing in Galway last week with Councillor Noel Thomas. The people of that community were furious. Hundreds of households, not just one or two, asked why were there double cycleways. I agree we need a single cycleway and a single walkway, but the carbon tax is being used and abused as a tax to put forward fancy projects. It is the same as greenways, where people are saying their land is being stolen from them. These are hard-working farmers who do not want to give their land to have miles and miles of black tar put down through the middle of it. It is insane. It is time to stop these fancy silly projects and put the money back into the country. I am willing to sit down with the Green Party, and have no problem in doing so, because some of its ideas are very good. We need to marry them with the people who might be on the other side and have concerns. We have concerns about vehicles at the moment. I put forward a proposal to the Taoiseach two weeks ago about a battery operated lorry, something people thought I would not do, but the Taoiseach did not answer. The proposal was to carry out a pilot project in west Cork, because I know a person who wants to do it. Such lorries work in New Zealand and Japan, but Ireland will wait for 20 years before we will consider such vehicles because we might put forward something ahead of the rest of Europe and wake up to the realities of what is out there. This is where we are going. We need to sit around the table. On public transport, Local Link has done some wonderful work for a couple of years. Over the past eight or nine months, it has had tenders and has told us there is no money to run bus operations. The Minister of State, Deputy Canney, told people to walk to work, cycle and take a bus. That is nonsense for most people who cannot do that. It annoyed people and that resulted in the protests at the present time. I congratulate Damien Long, who bought the Viaduct bar and, it is to be hoped, will make something like we are used to at exits 14 and 9 in west Cork. It will be a park-and-ride system. There is no train for 18 miles in west Cork. In the next 12 months, we hope, people can go to the Viaduct and get a bus to Dublin. I want a such a service. All of my neighbours and friends want to leave Mizen Head and the Beara and Sheep's Head Peninsulas and get a bus that will take them to a train. We certainly cannot get a train. We had it, but we blew it in the 1950s. There is no point in going back over that. There are also delays in retrofitting, which needs to be looked into. Progressive politicians need to have a cross-party alliance, whether that is the Green Party or any other party. We all need to sit around the table and toss out the solutions. Let us consider buses that can be battery operated. We need to look at solutions and work on them to ensure we do not end up being laggards like we are.

Sentiment score: 0.05