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THE DÁIL WILL today debate contentious plans to restrict the sale of turf, with Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan seeking to keep coalition TDs on side.
Sinn Féin will table a motion which calls on the government to “scrap plans to ban the sale of turf from September”, and the party is calling on all TDs to support it.
The bill seeks to exploit differences of opinion on the government benches after high-profile interventions from coalition TDs who are opposed to the move.
Fianna Fáil’s Barry Cowen TD and Fine Gael’s Brendan Griffin TD are among those who have expressed concerns about what restricting the sale of turf would mean for rural communities.
Minister Ryan has said previously that the proposals would not see a ban on the burning of turf and that those with extraction rights would still be permitted to cut turf for their own home heating.
In response to a parliamentary question (PQ) from Griffin earlier this month, Ryan said that the new regulations would instead prevent people cutting turf and placing it “on the market for sale or distribution to others”.
Speaking at the weekend, however, the Green Party leader said the new regulations had not yet been signed off on and that he should have told the Dáil that they were a “draft” only.
Ryan told reporters this morning that “it’s a workable, proper, good legal approach”.
“There are still risks. We have the risk of companies maybe suing,” he said.
“Ignoring air quality, ignoring air pollution, ignoring the fact that it’s killing our people – I don’t think that’s an option or a solution.”
The minister is today holding separate meetings with TDs from both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil as part of efforts to reassure them about the plans.
The minister will tell that them that the draft regulations are designed to focus on the commercial sale of turf and that there will be no ban on the sharing of turf with family members or neighbours.
Ryan is also set to outline that households in “genuinely rural areas” will be allowed to continue to use turf, with people living in communities of less than 500 people being exempt from the regulations.
It’s argued that the reason for this exemption is that there isn’t the same risk of air pollution in more isolated communities. The government is however concerned that there is evidence of an increase in the sale of turf in larger towns, leading to unsafe smoke levels.
Health
Ryan and other campaigners have insisted that the proposed restrictions on turf sales are primarily due to health reasons.
An alliance of public health organisations under the umbrella group the Climate and Health Alliance has advocated for a ban of turf sales, saying that there are more than 1,400 deaths in Ireland from air pollution every year.
Spokesperson for the alliance Dr Colm Byrne has said that the burning of smoky fuels, including turf, coal and wet wood, in the home is the leading source of air pollution.
Byrne has described sitting in front of a fire as being exposed to the same toxic fumes as “found in traffic blackspots at rush hour”.
Speaking on The Journal’s The Explainer podcast last week, Dr Raymond Flynn of Queen’s University Belfast said that the burning of turf was “in the same league” as other fossil fuels but that the health effects on individuals burning turf is dependant on air circulation in their homes.
Ahead of Minister Ryan’s meeting with government TDs and the Dáil debate today, a briefing note prepared by his department said there would be “thousands of extra people alive today” had previous governments introduced similar measures.
Backlash
Fianna Fáil TD for Offaly Barry Cowen is set to meet Minister Ryan to discuss his concerns about an outright ‘cliff-edge’ ban on the commercial sale of turf.
Speaking with The Journal, he said the meeting is overdue but is now pertinent, due to the Sinn Féin motion and Ryan’s weekend comments about this previous answer in the Dáil.
This has been brought about it would appear by a PQ response that was neither thought out, approved or factual. I’ve never heard a minister admit previously that a PQ response is not accurate. I have to take at face value that any PQ response I or anyone else gets is on the understanding that it is representative of fact.
When asked about the motion, and how unhappy government backbenchers might approach a vote on the matter, he said:
I would hope that having first of all relayed my concerns to my colleagues in Fianna Fáil, and indeed Fine Gael, that the mathematics that determine this government’s continuance will in no small way ensure that there is a resolution to our acceptance brought to bear as soon as possible.
If that means a countermotion to accommodate that, “so be it”, said Cowen
Cowen said the PQ response from the minister “was quite clear”.
“He wanted to ban all commercial sales of turf – that won’t wash.” he said, adding turf-cutting was a “diminishing practice” in any case.
It’s not as prevalent as it once was. Many people have already transitioned away from solid fuels… but they’re still, whether we like it or not, a cohort of households – a diminishing one, yes, but still a cohort of households, many of them vulnerable, that haven’t yet made that transition for whatever reason.
Cowen said there are households who have their own bog or who have turbary rights to cut turf on other people’s land.
“But there’s another cohort where some households don’t own a bog or don’t have turbary rights, and they depend on commercial cutters in their own community and locality whom they’ve built up relationship with many years, and they purchase from them every year. So that’s a commercial transaction. They buy their year’s supply annually, and in his PQ response, [Eamon Ryan] made no distinction between those two scenarios,” said Cowen.
It’s his [Eamon Ryan's] job to act as a minister within government for the entire country. And he needs to know, which he should and I expect he does, that there are pockets of areas throughout my county, many counties in Ireland, where this practice continues.
Cowen added that the proposal to exempt communities of 500 people or less may not go far enough.
“If he thinks that’s a climbdown, he has a lot more rungs in the ladder to go to come down to where we are on this,” he said.
“Sinn Fein will look to make political capital, to take advantage of this scenario, which I accept and understand – that’s politics,” he added.
Ahead of today, Mayo TD Michael Ring told The Journal that he had not been invited to the meeting with Ryan but that he ought to have been.
As a TD representing rural Ireland, Ring said it was important that there be no “hand-’picking” of ‘yes-men and women’ from each party in attendance.
“I don’t know who’s been invited but I got no invitation yet to it and I should be… I didn’t hear anything about it, only in the the media,” he said, adding that he would be seeking an invitation.
The Fine Gael TD said that he would be able to “spell a few things out” to the minister at the meeting, and that he wouldn’t be “one bit afraid”.
“If I don’t do it there, I will do it in the Dáil,” he said.
The issues around the regulations on cutting and selling turf have been very clear to both Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, he added.
Ring said that proposals must be found today to satisfy the concerns raised by rural TDs.
“This is wrong. It’s not the time to be doing it, we have a war, a shortage of fuel and it’s ridiculous. That’s what it is,” he said.
“People should be able to cut their own turf and people should be allowed to sell to their neighbours,” he said, adding: “That has to happen, that’s the basic.”
When asked what way he would vote on the Sinn Féin motion, he said:
I will never vote with Sinn Féin, so it doesn’t matter what motion they put down… I won’t be voting with them at any time.
Ring also raised what he described as “hypocritical” regulations that have seen briquettes from Germany and Latvia being sold in Ireland.
Kerry TD Michael Healy Rae raised the same issue last year, saying he was “ashamed of my life” about selling briquettes from Germany in his own shop in Co Kerry.
Sources state that the regulations currently causing controversy will not impact the sale of peat briquettes in shops but longer-term plans would see a ban on them also.
SF motion
Sinn Féin’s motion is set to be debated in the Dáil at 5.40pm today, but it is not restricted to the turf issue alone – perhaps impacting the chances that government TDs would support it.
While the Sinn Féin motion calls on the government to “scrap plans to ban the sale of turf”, it also calls on the government to cancel the scheduled Carbon Tax increase that will come into effect from next week.
The government has said the increase in Carbon Tax will be “more than offset” by other measures to reduce inflation.
Sinn Féin’s motion also claims that “more can and should be done” by the government to “support workers and families” on price increases, particularly in relation to home heating oil.
Asked by The Journal why the wording included criticisms of the government and did not stick to the turf issue alone, Sinn Féin TD Matt Carthy said it was “very important to contextualise the motion”.
“And to contextualise what I would only describe as silly debates that have been ongoing among government representatives in relation to the turf issue, because fundamentally what this is about is the ability of people to heat their homes,” he said.
That’s why we felt it was important to reference the fact that for most people who burn turf the only alternative or possible option that they would have to eat or hope is through home heating oil.
Carthy acknowledged that a move away from burning turf is a healthier move but he said that people will make that move themselves if there is “a credible, affordable alternative to turf”.
The Cavan-Monaghan TD said that today’s motion was “an ideal opportunity” for Fianna Fail and Fine Gael TDs who have been “running around their constituencies for the past number of weeks” sympathising with “hard-pressed families” to “make a stand on behalf of people who are really struggling”.
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Greens out
@Bitcoin Buddy: He’s unreal thinks he has a chance of getting in again. Read my lips No More Taxes.
@Joe Johnson: no more turf for you.
@Joe Johnson: Never ever forget FFFG brought him in to get the numbers.ye reap what you sow.
@Bitcoin Buddy:
I probably own more bog than most on this comments section.
Lets start… People who own bogs knew this was coming for years. Turf is a massive CO2 bank and Ireland/EU has responsibility not to allow it to be harvested.
Ryan is making a serious mistake when he is asking a small farmer or turf producer in the midlands to take the total burden of this exercise while someone in Dublin bay south gets the benefit. This is inherently unfair.
Then there is the other problem, Bog covers 5% of Ireland’s land… We have effectively made it worthless overnight. Who is going to maintain this land? Who responsibility is it to fence, insure,… what is stopping some one growing a plant in the future which will drain the land much like trees do today on other wet lands… This would be far more harmful than turf cutting and I don’t think you would be able to challenge it in court.
The solution could be to have grants to grow Scots pine or (Birch)… Some are a slow grow tree fully native to Ireland… This would mean land is maintained, Ireland would get a massive increase in forestry while it would be far more natural..
@Bitcoin Buddy: Good ol Eamon is always being accused of being out of touch, but lots of his critics are totally out of touch with the current and future dangers of ignoring the climate issue. Even if there was no Green Party all other parties will have to face up to it and that includes the reduction of the use of ALL fossil fuels including turf, one of the dirtiest of the lot. And the start of that is to ban the sale, not the use of turf, exactly the same as they did with smoky coal in the cities. You’ll still be able to cut and use your own turf and there will have to be a big support for those who depend on turf , especially older people and the vulnerable. It is a health and a climate issue, not an urban vs rural issue.
@Jerriko17: He is at fault in as usual his way of doing things.
How many times is it being said we have to save the world by doing this tha tor the other and it amounts to diddly squat in the world figures.
We are working on it and at this stage being lectured and talked down at has been done too often.
It is not a health issue at all, thats the grab any other reason to push our agenda. You find it with a lot of the propaganda you and others sprout
@Cowboy Paddy: Because unfortunately our politicians lack the foresight, intelligence and wherewithal to come up with such a strategy. It appears to be the same within every department of government. All you have to do is look at housing, health, education etc no one with the ability, or the want, to think outside the box to provide the solutions for the numerous problems that exist. Without doubt Ryan will go down in history as one of the worst politicians to have ever walked the floor of the Dail.
@Gary Kearney: It’s scientific FACT and nothing to do with “propaganda”. And it’s not my agenda… it happens to be one of the things that’s near the top of the agenda of every government in the world and spearheaded by the likes of the UN.
I hope you vote, because your single vote does count ?….. To follow your “diddly squat” theory, maybe you should consider not voting because you only have one vote and that’s not going to make any difference!!!!
Sleepy jesus Ryan needs to be put to “BED” at the next election. The controversy this bloke causes while having a snooze is quite simply alarming. On yer bike eamonn no one likes you.imo.
@Paul Gorry: At least he’s awake to the danger of climate change & our responsibility to cut down the use of fossil fuels not like many of his critics with their heads stuck in the bog. Seems like it’s great gas to slag Eamon off while ignoring the main issue which is way more important. It’ll still be be there long after Eamon cycles away into the sunset…..
@Jerriko17: you won’t say that when gas and oil are in short supply and are your taws are freezing next year without some cheap turf.
Another shambles by ryan
If your explaining you have lost the room
Turf is one of the most inefficient and polluting fuels, which is strip-mined our most biodiverse environments and biggest carbon sinks, by companies for €€€. All while alternatives exist.
But hey, culture…
@Urban Living Dublin: I agree that it is dirty and inefficient, however for ordinary people, living in the countryside who have a small bank and turbary rights, they should be let cut it until there are cheaper alternatives, my family had turf cut because they liked being on the bog in the summer and couldn’t afford to have the heating on for hours every day in winter. (still trying to convince mam to get a grant and change the bloody windows to keep the heat in) It was a yearly tradition and hard work. A kerosene boiler is way less work. As time goes on it will naturally disappear anyway.
@Urban Living Dublin: you are confusing Turf will milled peat. Turf is not strip mind, and it’s not harvested by large companies.
@Urban Living Dublin: most of the strip mining of peat was done by bord an mona. A state owned company by the way who burned it to generate electricity. They only stopped recently.
Cutting turf is on it’s way out naturally. The Greens are shooting themselves in the foot with this. They are going after a mainly elderly rural population.
@Urban Living Dublin: like everything else in this country, you are putting the cart before the horse. I hate the work in the bog and I’ll be glad when it’s gone. But we here in the Midlands don’t have much choice. Either we burn it or the government has to help us install an efficient system. I live in a former council house in a small village. These houses never had heating, or radiators even. Where are we supposed to come up with the money now?
@Jj: I agree
@Frank Carty: Thanks for the clarification. It is the selling that is being targeted. Most of what is sold is harvested industrially AFAIK
@Cathal Keeshan: you will still be able to do what you were doing under the proposed legislation. It is the selling of smoky fuels that is targeted.
Like for a lot of other environmental legislation, people freak out based on misinformation and by not reading the details.
@Urban Living Dublin: Then pay them for sinking your carbon
@Urban Living Dublin: what about the statement they are mainly doing it for air quality when Ireland is amongst the best in the world for particulate exposure?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-above-who-pollution-guidelines
More lies from the green lobby. They can’t be trusted!
@Urban Living Dublin: I’m sorry but this fella is a sorry excuse for a green activist. He has no educational knowledge in environmental studies nor anything outside of what his 20 or so advisors tell him. He like the vast majority of Irish politicians are only in to further and protect their own personal business interests. You should have a quick look into what Ryan and his green cronies have their money invested in and it’s easy to see what’s driving their zealotness. The greens had a chance to set a legacy for themselves by beginning a gradual change in people’s mindset by encouraging small but significant changes to the way we live our lives, giving incentives rather than disincentives to bring about change. Stuff like encouraging people to upgrade their boilers to super efficient ones, encouraging people to change to a smaller sized car, incentivise public transport use by making it more affordable and attractive to use than driving not by taxing the life out of fuel but dropping the price of tickets and not being contradictory in their policies on one hand telling people to conserve electricity and on the other granting planning permission to unlimited energy guzzling data centres which have absolutely no economic benefit whatsoever and are ecologically disastrous. He could have done all that and more but instead took a sledgehammer to the ordinary working folk, old age pensioners and families pushing thousands of homes into fuel poverty and even at the height of inflation continues with his disastrous arrogant policies more or less placing the blame for global warming on the ordinary Irish person and letting big industry more or less off scot free with the ridiculous exception of agriculture
@Michael McGrath: great comment Michael …couldn’t have worded it better
@Michael McGrath: I’m not here to defend the Green party, but if you have been looking beyond the media headlines, they have been implementing or at least been calling for or trying to implement most, if not all of those items you list.
It is in fact quite impressive what they have been able to achieve as a small minority party in a coalition with two centre-right parties who have for years been dragging their heels on environmental issues. Funny that people tend to forget how coalitions work though.
Think what you want of Eamon Ryan, but he and many of his party colleagues have proven to be able to work well with other politicians. If even Michael Healy-Rae thinks Ryan is a decent fellow (as he stated this week), then I doubt we’ve heard the last of him or the Green party.
@Anthony Guinnessy: I’m not a spokesperson for the Green party. Whatever reasons they state, that’s up to them.
I look at the science and just think that strip-mining our bogs to burn them is irresponsible.
@Albert Brennerman: I’d be happy for my taxes to go to farmers and bog owners to leave land untouched and given back to nature.
Currently, my taxes (and everyone else’s) are doing the opposite.
@Michael McGrath: If you are going to slag the man off, at least try and get your facts right. He is pretty much pushing all the incentive items you listed. Of course, these incentives cost and are largely funded via increased carbon taxes. Keep on dreaming that the world can go green without an economic hit
@Urban Living Dublin: not sure you know what you are talking about. Mostly it’s a neighbor selling to his elderly neighbors who can’t cut the turf themselves anymore. Or selling to neighbors who don’t have a plot. The greens are clueless about rural life. All these policies do is cost their government partners votes and achieve very little in terms of environmental change.
@Anthony Guinnessy: I’m surprised our minister for transport can’t identify traffic jams around small towns and large cities as a health concern.
‘Pollution that gathers inside cars in traffic jams and at red traffic lights is far higher than that found in cars that are moving. It contributes to lung cancer, asthma, and other respiratory diseases, including heart disease and stroke. All of these can be fatal.’
Yet he can identify turf as a health concern when only 5% of households use this fuel.
It seems traffic jams increases taxes while on carbon tax can be added to a bag of turf. This is not about health concerns. It’s a wonder the greens are not trying to weight trailer of turf leaving bogs to include carbon tax.
@leartius: The EPA identified the burning of solid fuels as the primary culprit of air pollution outside Dublin.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40750380.html
Regarding those traffic jams, why do you think environmentalists are pushing for alternatives to petrol/diesel cars and car ownership in general?
@Pól Leavser: You somewhat are making the argument for Eamon Ryan here. The legislation will unlikely affect a neighbour selling a bit of turf to another neighbour (has legislation completely eliminated the buying and selling of poitín?).
The legislation is targeted at large-scale industrial selling of peat fuels. Bear in mind that it also comes off the back of a successful lawsuit by the coal industry, who argued that specifically banning smokey coal and not peat products was unfair.
@Mickety Dee: No he has not. As regards fossil fuels he has hit the nuclear button with no recourse to the feasibility or affordability of what he is doing. He has no clue of what rural living entails for transport requirements and he most definitely has not incentivised public transport even in Dublin which is really the only place in Ireland that has anything resembling a working system. All he has done is load on taxes, refused to give felling licences for commercial timber plantations even for thinning and is in the process of trying to deny pensioners a bit of turf. Anyway I would expect nothing less from you your a constant govt narrative champion on this platform
@Urban Living Dublin: They are a small minority party in govt in name only, they hold the balance of power and are getting a lot of their own way because of this. Michael Healy Rae thinks he’s a decent fellow but you left out the “but” in that compliment. And they have basically achieved nothing except regressive carbon taxes, and giving grants to people that can already afford to retrofit houses. No improvement in national public transport routes no real pathway for people to buy newer more efficient transport no increase in a sustainable reliable renewable energy sources just rhetoric and bluff
@Urban Living Dublin: |Here is an idea, why dont you travel out of Dublin and talk to the people who actually dig their own turf.
You might learn., actually you would definitely learn a lot
Ah self righteous, urbanites, the most blinkered of all
@Michael McGrath: Kudos. Best and most intelligent comment by far.
@Michael McGrath: If you are going to provide examples of what they haven’t been doing, could you at least stop providing us with those that they in fact HAVE been doing.
It just shows that you simply have no clue about what the Government has been doing in the short time since they took office. You’re almost turning me into a defendant of this Government, which I prefer not to be.
@Gary Kearney: Here is an idea, why don’t you stop assuming that I haven’t.
Let’s just have an election, start again, this is going to be the outcome in the very near future anyway, so let’s stop the BS and get on with it
@Skeleton Cat?: he’ll be voted in again by his constituency who don’t care if turf was banned outright in the morning
@Rob Gale: The by election in his constituency went very poorly for the greens and there is a big swing against them.
Mainly becuase all they have done is lecture and push pet policy and none of the others that people voted for.
Turf Eamon out.
Haven’t heard him mention amazons huge data centre. Don’t they cause major pollution with the huge amount of energy they require? No let’s go after the ordinary people many if them elderly trying to heat their homes.
@Alan Ely: there is also if not bigger Microsoft in Clondalkin and Fb centers in clonee
Love the smell of turf. Green extinction next election
@Muckser Maher: Urban areas beside seas extinction next global warming.
Ryan go back to sleep .the Greens what an absolute Axxhole of a party !
From my cold dead midge eaten hands…
@SquideyeMagpie: minge
To the Irish people wake up you are getting screwed by FF Fg and the greens and typing this comment here the journal tells me I am toxic come on now freedom of speech is going guys we need to make a stand
This guy has done more to get people out on the bog cutting turf than anything else. Turf cutting was gradually dieing out anyway, in 20 years there wouldn’t have been more than a handful of people out turning and footing on the bog. If they’d just left it alone it would have petered out of its own accord. Eamonn Ryan will now instead have a rural version of the water charges protest type scenario on his hands.
They should just him….what does his secot in command think about all this ..she certainly changed her tune when she got a cosy seat at the table. …. plastic greens … The lot of them ..
@Michael Nolan: oust him
I live in a town of approximately 10,000 or 15, 0000 people. Since I was a child I was brought to the bog. I remember asking my father “will I be paid for this?”
The answer was
” won’t you be paid well enough when you’re warming your ass to it.”
I hated the bog.
Now I’m 52 bringing my own children to the bog and I can’t understand what the problem is. We don’t have rights, we pay every year for our turf. Kids currently hate it but hopefully I’m teaching them old fashioned ways.
Few months ago the constitution prevented them from acting on large Real Estate , Developers, the right to earn a living. AG would need be consulted. Now you are telling a private landowner that he cannot sell his turf to people. Turf is our cheapest source of fuel you can probably get out on 600, for a large house with a stove / boiler.
If you want clean air Go Ban Vehicles into the cities, it will end the 100K daily commutes to Dublin and their already are alternatives.
Its surely our largest air polluter. This is about playing to the Green base who seem elitist and unconcerned about something that is a part of the fabric of rural life. I burn the odd bag for nostalgia around Christmas its almost spiritual.
.
The worst thing about this is the greens losing their credibility. Ireland has reduced the percentage of its population exposed to particulate matter levels above WHO guidelines from circa 60% ij 1990 to circa 0.27% in 2017. Going off the WHO tables we are amongst the best countries in the world for air quality when it comes to particulate matter.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-above-who-pollution-guidelines
If they lie about this then what else are they lieing about?
Will Someone Send me Ryan’s Home Address so l Can deliver A Few Bags of Turf Free of Charge
Water this vegetable with diesel
@John Johnes: Very helpful comment….! But par for course for those with no clue or concern for one of the most important topics affecting our present and the future facing our kids and grandkids. Slag him off all you want but you’ll have to face up to your responsibilities sooner or later.
@Jerriko17: We are all facing it and doing our part, it is the way the message is being delivered.
Taking to people and working with people.
treating people with respect.
None of the things the green party or its leader is known for.
Bullying, using incorrect data and a smugness of self belief that they are going to save the world.
Its getting to the stage that as soon as he or any of them open their mouths, people switch off. They have actually made the environment a subject that people get angry about and not for the right reasons.
But are tired of the people sending the constant negative message and their smug delight in it.
Ryan wants a tolatarian society he must go
I’d say ff and fg are laughing there socks off at him and his second in command the…plastic greens .haha what an oxymoron the lot of them
Details?
Among other things under SAC rules you can’t clear a drain to prevent flooding and
neither can you harvest timber you have years invested in or replant trees for future use.
If you think this is just about turf then you’re missing a few details yourself.
You’d swear it was uncle Joe with the patch of turf FN up the planet …it’s beond funny
Another waste of Dail time, both the greens and the shinners surely have better topics to discuss
@Patrick O Connell: This is an issue of concern and it effects people outside the FFG electorate. You may prefer Sinn Féin and the Greens not to bother about such issues and let FFG get on with not running the country and ripping off the public purse for their cronies but that’s the way the turf is crumbling.
If Ukraine war is ongoing next winter, burning turf will be the least of our problems. It may be a solution.
People: We need to do something about Climate Change
Also People: Except that. Or that. And that one would affect me, so no.
@Steve: yip. Minister for the Environment gets heckled for doing his job…..
@Paul Clancy: His job is to challenge companies and suppliers to create alternative solutions. Removing current energy sources and having no alternatives in place is just plain daft.
@David Corrigan: His job is to be a politician and to work for the people. Not to have 8 advisors and a whole team to push his personal beliefs.
The challenges faced by the companies and not going to come for him and his supporters.
They have made the green agenda look bad as all they ever want is there way and nobody else matters.
All the aprties are greening up and the personality issues will cause them problems. Lettuce , wolves and napgate all hurt the entire brand/ angry green person. People are tired of being lectured
@Paul Clancy: No he gets heckled because of his attitude and his treatment of other people.
His disregard for anybody else and their position.
He sprouts figures that are wrong repeatedly and goes mad if anybody questions him.
It is not the issues that people heckle, its him. He is not very popular outside his supporters, even his own party were a little over 50% supporting him.
While I respect politicians actively trying to better the Country, some succeed, some fail however Eamon Ryan is really something else and has absolutely no place in modern politics. Sleeping in the Dail, telling us how to shower, trying to have us sharing cars, he has no idea of how rural Ireland actually needs and works. I cannot for the life of me understand how his constituents voted him in.
Eamon Ryan and his partners Friends of the Irish environment are using tax payer funded legal aid to purposely flood houses destroy lives and villages at “Lough funshinagh flood Crisis” in Co Roscommon
We should hook Ryan up to the national grid. He produces enough hot air to power a small city. Not sure though if he’d produce green power or just more methane?
Thin end of the wedge…..?
Eamon Ryan 2022-Turnip on wheels…
There’s no tax to be made in the bog but there is on imports, simple.
Eamonn, please resign before you bring your party to it’s knees.
have your say