Richard O'Donoghue: Dublin Airport, Carbon Tax and Hypocrisy

In 2021, the Climate Action Low Carbon Development Act 2021, which was introduced by your Government Minister, and it was actually supported by Sinn Féin, which actually introduces carbon tax. And today, and yesterday, and the day before, they're on saying, we're against carbon tax. But yet they voted for it in the Climate Action Bill. So they're now coming out saying they're against these things. And every week they jump up and down here and they say they're against it. But last week, they decided they were going to fight for it. And last week, you're right. I wasn't here last week. I wasn't here last week because for the one reason is, and if you may, the first person that came in here to this door in a truck against carbon tax was myself. But you mustn't been here that time because you never came out to the truckers. You never came out to the people in the protest, but you came out the last day to support them. That's what you've done. Now, getting back to this, Minister, right, and you love talking about other people, but you can't talk about yourselves. Exactly. No order. So they're where they are now. This is what they do to try and do to government. They won't silence me because I know what I'm talking about. So where's the wind blowing today for Sinn Féin? Hold on. I must just check it. Hold on. Here they are. Look, the wind is over here. Here they are. Here they are. Good job. So this is what they're doing. They're still talking. Chair, look at this. Thank you very much. Thanks last time. Now, getting back to Dublin Airport, and I'm delighted Dublin Airport is doing well. But getting back to the carbon emissions and the Climate Action Bill that was supported here on my right. But, right, you brought in the carbon emissions. Where are most of the people that are landing here going? They're not staying around Dublin, are they? They're travelling throughout the country. So where's your carbon emissions when you're talking about that and the cost of fuel that you want to increase by 32 cents? On the Irish people. So where are you going with this? On one hand, you're talking about carbon emissions, and on the other hand, you want to extend Dublin Airport to which there are 6 million over at the moment. Why didn't you look at Shannon, which can be developed by another 2.5 million passengers without any infrastructural change? Why didn't you look at Cork? Why do people have to travel from all different parts of the country to come to Dublin because they can't get connecting flights because it's a monopoly in Dublin? And then you look at the people that live in Dublin around the airport. The noise pollution. They're all complaining about it. The traffic congestion. Trying to get to the airport. They're all complaining about it. But what do you do, you Dublin TDs? Let's make Dublin more congested. Let's stop any person coming home to Dublin to live with their parents or their grandparents. Let's stop them because we're going to make sure that we've all our eggs in one basket. Ireland should be the basket where you actually share everything, not just looking at Dublin. I brought this up more times, even at Convention Centre, and I was in the central bank there. I said we were there for a year. I brought it up that time when Eamon Ryan was talking through both sides of his mouth as well about carbon tax. But what do you do? You're stopping people coming home by overdeveloping Dublin and not looking after the rest of the country. And it'll all come back again to carbon tax, which you will take more and more and more and stop families from looking after their young ones. Stop families from building their own houses. Stop infrastructure in this country because of inflation. All brought on by your carbon tax. But you've no problem in letting buses and trucks travel from the port in Dublin and 83% of the passengers coming into this country travel down the country. And I welcome them to Limerick, but they could have landed in Shannon and come into Limerick. They could have landed in Shannon and went to Kerry, Cork, Galway. They could land anywhere around the country and we would divide up the carbon emissions. But no, you just want to extend one place. You want to put suffering on the people of Dublin, suffering on their families that they can't come home and build houses in this area because it's overpopulated. And the rest of the country is crying out for business. Like the other airports, you can go to Knock, increase Knock, go to Kerry, increase Kerry airport. All lowering emissions because most of the targets that they come in from, you just see all the buses traveling down and they'll do a day trip and come back up again. All down to carbon emissions that you're saying on one hand you're trying to reduce and on the other hand you're trying to excel at. So where's your explanation on that Minister? I'm all for things working together, but I'm also for equality for all the other airports to increase at the same time. But how can they go against a monopoly that has all the flights, connecting flights. You can only get a certain amount of flights out of Shannon because the connecting flights you have to get them through Dublin. That's a problem. So if you want to do the right thing, you should connect all of Ireland and let all the airports develop together. Then you should look about increasing the cap if they can't, if the quota is too high then. Then you should look at it that way. But increase on one and not helping the others, not helping the people around this country. That's wrong. That's not forward planning. That's you Dublin planning, but you're destroying the future of the people that want to come back and live in Dublin. The next generation that want to live in Dublin. And you're destroying the lives of people that have to live around the airport where they have extra flights now going out. And if you look at Dublin airport, when they're supposed to take off, they're supposed to bank at a certain time. Now they're saying how we're going to organise this, they're supposed to go out three kilometres before they bank. Now because there's so many flights coming in, they're banking at a kilometre and a half out. So that means they're going over more residential areas which you want to approve more of and allow more people. So look at the laws if you want to introduce laws. But look in the mirror when you're introducing laws because it's you breaking the laws.