"Green" policies are destroying this country

If he didnt know the answer so be it. However he did know it was inconsequential. Not sure how he'd know the latter without knowing the former. Maybe just a simple misunderstanding

Tiny percentage? Nearly every house in rural ireland runs a back boiler from a stove. I was in a DIY store in Co.Longford this week and they were EXPANDING their solid fuel stove section in the shop, such is the demand. One would wonder how accurate statistics are in this regard.

You should see the tonnage of turf being purchased across the western seaboard this time of year. Why? Because it boils down to cost. With electricity prices doubled in most homes and kerosene prices rocketing, stove sales are increasing and by extension, the demand for turf and solid fuel. Go take a look out in the yards of every Co-op in the country and count the pallets of kiln-dried wood for sale.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Green policies, they are drastically out of touch with reality. At the end of the day, putting food on the table and heating a home for your family comes first, and people outside the m50 bubble couldn't care less about being green when it becomes a real struggle , due to enormous costs, to provide both of those basic needs.

With The green parties' push to force people to live in towns and cities, their ignorance of life outside these areas, and their dire neglect of rural communities, one thing is absolutely certain. There will be no green party members anywhere near government at the next election.

I think the "M50 bubble" is an unfair comment. Plenty of Dubs don't want the garbage the Greens are offering .The Green's core base is well off south Dublin residents who spend 60k on a brand new electric car and think they are doing the environment a favour.

I lived in a house for years with an open fire and a back burner. The back burner barely warmed the radiators. I know several people who installed stoves in the past few years, none of them had them connected to the central heating, they used oil or gas to heat their radiators.

Its a bit mean to call them luddites, but since 1990, very few houses use coal or turf for central heating.

That's an indication that those houses who still do so, do it because the owners haven't upgraded their heating systems, rather than they just happened upon a better heating system before Oil Gas and Electric heating became the norm.

Semantics. I pay fuel duty for using fossil fuel in my car. No difference in paying carbon taxes on the same fuel. No interest in the politicians telling me its for a good cause. For the record it doesnt pay for supplying my water not that it matters. I alao pay a shite load of income tax and vat etc and Ive no knowlwdge as to how thats spent either

I'm not disagreeing with you on this matter, this project is specifically for freight and the minister seems to be aware that freight transport on our island is not really a runner, passenger rail transport is a tremendous method if the critical mass is available, if we are to see future work habits being primarily from the home, and certainly the value of investing in commercial property and for that matter car parks is questionable at best it brings into question the cost benefit of rail transport.

This is pure handwaving. We've already had problems getting people to bid for thermal generation where they would only get to generate for a few percent of the time. But you think people are going to build vastly more expensive BESS to do the same job? Not going to happen. All it will do is push up the price of electricity to extraordinary levels or, more likely, result in a completely unreliable grid. You're extrapolating from an intraday load smoothing service where investment capital is automatically available because there is serious money to be made, to longer term storage where the market conditions don't favour even the cheaper fossil fuel options that are available today.

You are not talking about million of tonnes, you are talking about billions or even trillions. And these things don't last forever. Eventually you are talking about a steady state replacement rate that is completely infeasible. Not to mention that the energy minerals needed to create them don't exist in the required quantities. The moment you do even back-of-a-fag-packet estimates on this stuff is the moment you realise it's never going to happen. And then you have Greens completely mystified as to why their utopia isn't taking shape and emissions are continuing to rise -- it's because they are either innumerate or have their heads stuck firmly in the sand. We need vast amounts of new, reliable, low-carbon, baseload power. I wonder is there any technology available today that fits the bill?

Well, no. I was just responding to your "you can light a fire to avoid dying of cold". Turns out you can light a fire to stop dying of heat too. Obviously a better option would be to have a modern grid and air conditioning. But when I suggested that, you suddenly got all worried that electricity grids aren't reliable... which is a bit rich coming from someone who wants to run the grid on unreliables.

You make it sound as if all the places prone to these heatwaves would be veritable paradises if it weren't for climate change. Many are hell holes already. Much of the southern USA is uninhabitable without air conditioning. I've had people collapse beside me from heat and that was just in Tennessee, let alone southern Louisiana or Alabama. I've experienced 40C wet bulb temperatures at night time in New Orleans.

It's even scarier looking at cities on the Arabian peninsula. Humans live in very artificial environments. It is true to say that billions would die without modern technology. Maintaining and improving our modern infrastructure is a far more important task than mitigating climate change. It would be great if we could do both, but they are not even close in terms of their relative importance.

Couldn't give a toss about you hard man opinions either. A lot of uncarbon friendly heat being generated there. Ring fenced taxes my backside..sounds like a Govt PR in other words 100% hot air

My point is, let's see how over 1.7 Million people vote in the next election, shall we?