Ireland is setting out a very ambitious set of targets in our carbon budgets for the next 15 years. If we are to achieve such significant reductions, we will need to bring the public along with us on that journey. People cannot be commanded. Effective change means putting the levers of climate action into people’s own hands. That will not be achieved by shoe-horning continental solutions into addressing the unique set of challenges that we face here in Ireland. We have a three-day debate every October in relation to our annual budget. Yet, the Government is only providing a 200-minute debate tomorrow on Dáil Éireann’s final approval of a carbon budget for the next 15 years, which will have long-term economic and societal impacts on every single individual. We believe that amount of time is insufficient.

On the same question, earlier the Taoiseach asked us and other speakers to be meaningful and honest. We opposed this carbon tax two years ago when the Government put forward its ten-card trick. There was talk about a three-card trick. We want a full and meaningful debate, and we want it today. We are challenging the Order of Business for that reason, to ensure that people can live and that they can survive, given the increases in the costs of ESB, gas, excise duty, etc. The Taoiseach dances around like on the head of a pin telling fibs and alienating us. We will go off for two weeks on Thursday but we will be back and on 1 May we will add insult to injury with another carbon tax. It is totally unacceptable and totally unpalatable to our people. It is anathema to right thinking people. We do not deny climate change, but this is not the time and this is not the way to deal with it, with a stick rather than a carrot. All the Taoiseach is missing here is the múinteoir and the bata, lecturing us all on what we can and cannot do. We have been honest with the people. It is the Taoiseach who has been dishonest, not us.