It is good to have a few extra minutes to talk about this. Obviously, this legislation is about the National Oil Reserves Agency 2 cent levy suspension. That makes it 22 cent in total on diesel, 17 cent in total on petrol and another 2 cent reduction on home heating oil. As I have said and others have said, it is simply not enough in the current crisis. I know it is a geopolitical issue, but geopolitics hits people very hard, especially the most vulnerable. We had calls earlier in the year for a €400 support for people with disabilities who face additional costs. Imagine how they are faring right now with this. The excise duty cuts are not going to make up for the fuel price increases. The most vulnerable in our society are going to be affected by it. We need to do more. In that context, I welcome the suspension of the NORA levy, but we need to do more on the excise duties in the short term. In the medium term, we have to move away from our addiction to fossil fuels. As I have said to the Tánaiste, the Taoiseach and now the Minister of State, it is happening way too slowly. Looking to 2040 and 2050 is simply not sufficient. We should be treating it like a wartime situation and moving at a rapid pace. There are people in local authority houses who are crying out for insulation and proper air handling systems that will reduce their fuel costs. That could be done a lot faster than is happening. The types of grants out there are insufficient to encourage people to move away. We need to have more measures whereby if a person is going to save €800 in a year, those €800 savings could go to the cost of their retrofit, even if it is over a 30-year period. We have to be creative about this. The bigger picture is the fact that our planet is warming at an exponential rate. We are going to face massive costs and massive increases in the costs of living if we do not something. Obviously, that is a collective global cost. While little old Ireland is is per capita a high contributor, we are relatively small in the big picture, so we need to move at EU level. We also need to get the likes of Trump out of power, but that is up to the American people. We have to look at our climate measures. The most effective climate measure is a just transition by making sure that we have alternatives to importing fossil fuels and that people can heat their homes from home-grown production, be it from green hydrogen from excess electricity production, better insulated housing or public transport powered by hydrogen, electricity produced at home or biofuels. I have said this 100 times and I will say it 100 times more. We have the potential to be a net exporter of energy rather than an importer of €6 billion plus, as we are. That is going to cut costs for our people. With the surpluses we have, we need to support people in the short term when they are getting these price hikes, but in the short to medium term, we need a massive investment in retrofitting and home-grown energy. It is too long to spread it out. We have to say that by 2035 we will double the volume of renewables and storage. We have to look at private wires. We have to look at grid improvements, but we are not. We are just doing little incremental bits, which is not enough in the context of the prices that people have to pay at home but also our long-term contribution to the sustainability of the planet. We need to get real. I fully support measures, and I want to double the measures being introduced in the short term to help people. We have to start putting in the investment that will pay back in a very short period of time on the grid.
Sentiment score: 0.08