It is interesting that this Bill is being discussed in the Dáil in the middle of a fuel crisis for so many people. The Bill will focus on air pollution while many family businesses and small business will struggle simply to keep their houses warm in this fuel crisis. I received an email from a constituent during the week. She is a carer. She called in to see one of her clients, an elderly gentleman. He was sitting in front of his electric oven to keep warm because he had run out of oil and sticks to be able to heat the house. That is an incredible image. Pensioners who worked all their lives in this country are now forced, due to the lack of affordable fuel, to sit in front of an electric oven to keep warm. In many ways, it puts this discussion into perspective. There is a slow-motion leadership challenge happening within Fianna Fáil.

Sentiment score: -0.12

While Fianna Fáil wallows in never-ending dysfunction, older people in this country struggle to keep warm. The country cannot wait for Fianna Fáil to get its act together. I agree with many of the Fianna Fáil backbenchers, in that Micheál Martin has to go. All of these decisions the Government is involved in have significant consequences. Some of those consequences are unexpected. I agree that we must become a country with far cleaner air. No one wants to see individuals lose their lives prematurely due to poor air quality or people developing diseases of the lung, etc., as a result of poor air quality. This legislation does not exist in a vacuum, however. It must exist in the real world in which people live and are struggling. The baseline is that we have 320,000 Irish households currently in fuel poverty. The issue we are hearing on the doorsteps and in our constituency offices is that people are struggling to keep the lights on, their houses warm and their businesses going. The unaffordability of fuels is the biggest issue people are experiencing. In reality, fuel poverty and the lack of fuel also cause deaths in our country. It is estimated that approximately 2,800 people die in our country per year as a result of a lack of fuel. That is a very serious issue. In a scenario where fuel is getting harder to secure, reducing access to other fuels leads to poverty, people being unable to heat their homes, and deaths. That is not being understood enough by the Government. There are people around the country, especially in regional and rural Ireland and older families who do not have the technology to use sustainable energy, who are dependent on turf. They cannot come about turf, however, because the local fella up the road who used to cut half an acre of bog cannot sell it to them any more as a result of Government law. One of the big problems is that the Government’s attitude to energy is Dublin centric. The fact the Government was not willing to give a real relief on kerosene - home heating oil - which is the basis of home heating in most of regional and rural Ireland, shows the disconnect of Ministers in this Government. They do not see beyond the M50 when developing policies. This is quite a hardcore Bill, with €500,000 in fines and search and seizure powers to be provided in certain situations. At the other end of the scale, we have individuals who, for want of turf, sticks and coal, cannot heat their homes. My difficulty with this Government is its reliance on the stick rather than the carrot to change people’s behaviours. The shocking level of taxation put on fuel, for example, is a stick to move people out of fossil fuels but many people simply do not have an alternative. Behaviours are not changed when there are no alternatives. This simply enforces a punitive tax on people that they cannot afford to pay. There is a massive cost barrier in switching from coal, turf or sticks. These people do not desire to pollute or create unhealthy breathing air for individuals, but they have no option because they have no other fuel source. The Government must use the carrot. This approach is harder. Competency is needed for the Government to be able to deliver it, and competency is in short measure in this Government for sure. Alternatives need to be offered to people. We heard about cars idling, for example. I will attend a public meeting tonight in Castleknock Lawn Tennis Club at 7.30 p.m. If the Minister is around, he might like to attend. It is not too far from him.

Sentiment score: -0.11

It is about fuel prices, the M50, traffic congestion and public transport, which are all reasonable and important issues. I am told a freedom of information, FOI, request was submitted to the Department of Transport. This was reported in The Sunday Times this year. The FOI asked whether more public transport capacity would be provided in the Department’s budget this year. That report said that there would be no extra capacity in public transport this year despite the level of funding going into it. A lot of people are travelling from the likes of Meath. Some 60,000 people are forced to use their cars because there is no rail line. It has been promised since 1994. It is going to happen in, maybe, 2036 if no judicial review or anything else happens. These people would give their right arms to be able to get out of the car and sit in a train rather than the four-hour, desperate commute they have. The carrot I mentioned is the provision of public transport, including extra bus capacity as well as train capacity, to get cars off the road in order to clean the air so that people can live healthier and longer lives. That is the frustration that exists among people. Deep retrofitting of homes is still inordinately expensive. It is incredibly expensive for those who live in a semi-detached or detached home, even with the grants provided. It is not available to most income classes at the moment. The provision of solar panels is still incredibly expensive. It costs between €7,000 and €12,000, depending on the level of rooftop solar panels and the type of battery you choose. We have never been as rich but we also have never had as much of a squeezed middle as we do now. Middle income families often fall off a social welfare cliff. They are given no supports. They are too rich for energy social welfare supports but too poor to be able to provide the alternative sources needed to get out of carbon fuels. I will mention something of interest to the Minister. This Government has competing objectives. One of them is the building of extra homes. Highly rated homes are obviously an objective in terms of reducing our energy policy, but they have a negative effect on the supply of homes. It costs an extra 12% to build an A-rated home compared with a normal home. We know there is a viability problem. Every time the price of a home increases, it becomes less viable to build, causing fewer builders to build and a reduction in supply. We know every time the price of a home increases, it also costs more to rent and makes it less accessible to people. While we might achieve the objective of fuel efficiency with A-rated homes, it costs us in the provision of homes on the other side. I still believe that the provision of homes is the most important issue facing the country. The Minister must have seen this report recently that outlined that people who were spending more in A-rating their homes were not necessarily reducing their energy consumption by the same amount. That is a significant problem. If we are spending big chunks of money on the deep retrofitting of homes but it is not leading to the practical, real-world reduction in the consumption of fuels, then that money is going to waste in reality. We are not meeting the objectives and we are paying the money on it. I would like to hear the Minister’s views on how we can square that circle in achieving those objectives. We want to see the reduction of pollution and particulates in the air as well as the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere, but we want the Government to realise that there are other objectives that need to be achieved as well. One of the main objectives is fuel and energy affordability and security for families. That has been ignored, which is why we had the big crisis that led to the omnishambles last week on the streets of our country. That is one of the objectives that have been ignored. The other objective that we have to look at is the provision of proper public transport. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in commuter hell at the moment. They undertake two- or three-hour journeys in and out of Dublin on a daily basis just to be able to work. That objective is not being achieved either.

Sentiment score: -0.02

Stable. Show me the stable government.

Sentiment score: 0.30