Eamon Ryan resigns before the General Election.

Mod: @theValheru853 don't post in this thread again

Edit: They have learned nothing. See the below quote. It's an important issue for voters, most people are indeed not climate sceptics, but it doesn't drive votes. People vote for money issues not for notional ones. Climate issues have only hit people in the pocket, with higher taxes on energy and transportation, while there is no tangible benefit to the man on the street (who doesn't care about percentage reductions on a spreadsheet, but does care about the content of his wallet).

You do know that we will be facing much, much higher costs down the line along with the potential for massive fines for missing targets. Who will be paying for all of this?

Despite climate ranking low in every survey of voters’ priorities before the recent election, we now have detailed research that shows that the vast majority of Irish people want to be part of the climate solution. Less than 5% are what you might call climate sceptics.

The greens have the same problem SF have. They mistake support for an idea as votes earned.

There was an Exit Poll survey done at the time of the election which showed that more than half believe that not enough has been done in terms of climate change despite the electorate not giving their vote to the Green Party candidates…

More than half of people surveyed by the General Election 2024 Exit Poll believe the Government has not gone far enough on climate change, while one-in-five believe it has gone too far.

https://www.rte.ie/news/election-24/2024/1130/1483928-election-climate/

If people chose their election candidates based on the DRS scheme then they stupidly wasted their vote. Not wanting to derail this thread into one on the DRS but there was an issue before its introduction where many plastic containers were ending up in landfill or in hedges. If people see it as a tax then that is simply because they intentionally choose to see it that way. As a child, there was a deposit on glass bottles and nobody moaned about it.

There has been a massive reduction on plastic bottles as per Coastwatch ireland's cleanup surveys…

https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2024/10/14/deposit-return-scheme-leads-to-massive-reduction-in-plastic-bottles-and-drinks-containers-found-on-shores-by-coastwatch/

Across Europe, there is a return rate of over 90% in similar schemes and it is expected that Ireland will follow this statistic despite the constant whinging from some about it…

https://sensoneo.com/waste-library/deposit-return-schemes-overview-europe/

Personally, I've bought next to no plastic bottles since the introduction of the scheme and the few that I did, I brought home for later 're-turn'ing.

The only negative I see with it is that the large amounts of plastic that are used with other products aren't included so shopping behaviour won't change. Mushrooms bought in their blue trays with cling film rather than a feckin paper bag is one simple example.