World Earth Day is a day that should be about hope, urgency and leadership but the truth is that the Government has failed on climate action. It has failed on fairness and has failed on any kind of just transition. If emissions continue on their current path, climate change will have profound consequences for Ireland. We can see the warning signs already: more frequent flooding; stronger storms along the coasts; rising sea levels threatening coastal communities; and increased pressure on farming from unpredictable weather, drought and flooding. Our food system, biodiversity, water quality and public health will all be put at risk, and Irish towns will face repeated flood damage. These impacts are not distant or abstract; they are happening now. There was some mention earlier of plantations and biodiversity. Nowhere is this more real or apparent than in the tributaries of the River Feale in Listowel, the Abha Bheag and the Smearlagh. Not only has the biodiversity been decimated in that area in that there are no brown trout left in the rivers, but it has been completely wrecked by the plantations of Sitka spruce. We saw the flooding in Listowel two weeks before the election which has not yet been analysed in the reports that have been published. Because of the plantations, because of the vertical drainage, a surge came from heavy rain and flooded two or three parts of Listowel town. That has never been addressed but I would put it down directly to the plantations upriver. As I said, the impacts are not distant; they are happening now. Ambitious climate action is not optional; it is essential. Acting now means protecting communities, safeguarding rural livelihoods and ensuring that energy security in an unstable world is prioritised. There should be ambition but there should also be fairness. Climate action will only succeed if it brings people with it. Lowering energy bills, expanding affordable alternatives, investing in renewables, resilience and ambitious transition is the only way to protect Ireland's future while no one is left behind. Unfortunately, the record of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on climate action is littered with missed targets and broken promises. They promised that today's pain would bring progress tomorrow. They assured us that carbon taxes would change behaviour and they consoled us in the face of skyrocketing prices by telling us that better things were around the corner, but that is incorrect. Ordinary people are paying the price because we have not seen a just transition. In fact, it is the opposite; ordinary people are being punished by Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and even the Greens, all because they cannot afford to transition. Sinn Féin recognises the magnitude of what is before us. We see that urgent and ambitious action must be taken. We have to get it right and we are not going to do that with the approach that has been taken to date. This is eco-austerity. Sinn Féin has repeatedly warned the House from the very beginning that the Government's approach could never work due to the inequitable outcomes. Regressive measures that prioritise eco-austerity over just transition produce growing resentment and fear among ordinary people. They fail to leverage climate action and actually set us back. As the criticisms grow, it is getting harder for the Government to ignore the mounting evidence. We are deeply dependent on imported fossil fuels, emissions reductions are lagging, climate targets are slipping and energy independence is starting to look like another opportunity that has been let slip through the Government's fingers. That is the legacy of this Government. The reality of what people are dealing with in the cost-of-living crisis is that families are being crushed. The balance is not right and Government is completely out of touch. We have the highest electricity prices in the European Union. While households are being fleeced, giant data centres are getting sweetheart deals. Families are paying six to eight times more in network charges than data centres. Let us call it what it is. Households are paying for grid updates driven by massive corporate demand and corporations are not paying their fair share. That is a political choice made by this Government. The solutions are there to end the rip-off but the political will is not. After the war in Ukraine and now what is happening in the Middle East, global instability is being exploited and corporations are cashing in. Still, for three years the Government has failed or refused to give the energy regulator extra powers to tackle price gouging and anti-competitive behaviour. Sinn Féin would act to regulate standing charges, enhance transparency and make sure that the biggest users of energy pay their fair share because households should not be doing it. There is a design flaw in the energy system that is not designed to serve the people. As I said, we are dangerously overdependent on imported fossil fuels with 94% of imported energy fossil-fuel based. There is a clear way out of this which is the delivery of Irish energy independence, not as one Government Minister says by sitting on their hands and navel gazing about offshore wind but delivering.

Sentiment score: -0.03