Senator Gerard Craughwell- speech from 26 May 2022

Go raibh maith agat laus geirlech. Leader, the other day I congratulated the Pd4 on accession to ICTU. RACO, I have been informed, in order to be allowed to accede to an associate member of ICTU, must go to the courts. This is a human resources issue, an IR issue, not a legal issue, and I fail to understand why we are compelling RACO to go to the courts. I would ask you to engage with the Minister and to have it dealt with through the C&A scheme that is available, and not to go to the courts. Over the last few sessions here, I have adverted to the search and rescue operations and the rejection of the IRCOR's 415-page submission. FOIs have been coming in to me over the last few days. We have an FOI here today. I am going to share every single document I have with every single member of this House. Because, as far as I am concerned, there is a level of arrogance coming from the Department of Transport, an unintelligent consumer of the service, which is unbelievable. The level of bias, the level of dismissing highly qualified professionals who put forward a 415-page submission, to me, not only is it wrong that it should happen, but it will cost this state 400 million over the life of the contract that we shouldn't pay. Now, I don't care if the IRCOR never gets it, but what I do want is I want what I would call an intelligent consumer to oversee this. The other piece of madness in this country, which I had the privilege to personally go and look at, was Derry, Brian and Galway at the weekend. 70 turbines producing enough electricity for 50,000 houses decommissioned, stopped in its tracks, because of something that happened in 2003 regarding an environmental impact assessment. That organisation, does it claim all the mudslide? I saw where the mudslide was. It's completely taken over again by nature. That's what nature does. There are miles of roads in Derry, Brian. There are fibre optic cables all over Derry, Brian. There is an electric grid going into Derry, Brian. There are 70 turbines in Derry, Brian that cost this state 70 million and they are sitting there idle today. And if they are to be decommissioned, it will take two and a half or three years to get planning permission to decommission them. And we will never, ever, ever be able to restore Derry, Brian to what it was before the turbines were put in. For God's sake, in the middle of an international energy emergency, can we not go back to Europe and say we need to put this right? I believe that that particular establishment made over 11.8 million for the state in one year. In the month of January alone, 1.8 million was returned to the state in profits from that. Now, I fully accept planning permissions must be followed through legally, etc., etc. But it's been operation for 20 years. And nobody has said a word. And over those 20 years, there are only two people that are showing an objection to it. And one of those two people went door to door to get citizens to agree to put it in in the first place. So, I think we need the Minister in here and we need an open and honest debate on Derry, Brian. And we need to decide which is more important than a national emergency, energy or an environmental impact assessment that wasn't completed, that needs to retrospectively be completed. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.