"Green" policies are destroying this country

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122061126#Comment_122061126

The cycle of them being scrapped and reintroduced hasn't helped.

spicedspud

The new shoe recycling pits will go over a storm.

Simply take your older shoes, arrange them alphabetically by brand, left shoes going in a blue bag, right shoes in an octagonal cardboard box.

Remove shoe laces and keep them in specialty envelopes provided by Legitimate Company 26 based in Sri Lanka until further notice.

Proceed with bags and boxes to the nearest Shoe Pit which is guaranteed to be open at times.

Upon flinging into pit, a facial recognition device will display a 100 digit number.

This number can then be entered into the Shoe Pit app which will then produce a password that can be redeemed against a token that can be exchanged for a ticket.

Upon presentation of ticket to a Shoe Pit Retail Hero, it will be transformed into a 10 cent reduction on, strictly, either wooden culery or gluten free broccoli. Not both.

I will be practically invisible chairman of the Shoe Pit board overseeing whatever, at least 30 minutes per month, and will do so for 100k.

Oh yeah and the environment thing.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122062143#Comment_122062143

That is the main problem with myths. People hear them and then repeat them without even checking if they are true or false.

As a nation we are not wasters of water. From Population Review country ranking/water consumption Annual Water Withdrawl per Capita (cubic meters) our figure is 312.04. Deduct the 40% that is lost from mains and that is reduced to to 187.

Now to compare that 187 to other countries in Europe alone. Many of them with much lower annual rainfall thn ours.

Greece 971, Armenia 954, Iceland 815, Bulgaria, 730, Finland, 631, Spain 620, Serbia 609, Portugal,601, Italy 560, Norway 496, Slovenia 482, Hungary 482, France 402, Austria 388, Belguim 368, Germany 340, Romania 333………

As I said earlier, had the promise of mains fit for purpose before metering been followed through water charges may have stood a chance. Any government in the future hoping to reintroduce them would have to first hold the long promised referendum that there is no sight nor sound of, convince the population that the money would be ringfenced and have the main at a level fit for purpose and whatever about the first two, with Uisce Eireann`s glacial pace on mains whatever your age is that is highly unlikely to happen in your lifetime and it`s certainly not going to happen in mine.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122062902#Comment_122062902

Rubbish I say. Try living with less water and you'll soon find many ways to reduce. The real myth is that the Irish public on public water supplies are careful with their use of water. Those I know couldn't give a crap about how much they use and only get exercised when there's rationing or faults.

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122068010#Comment_122068010

While not careful they are not careless either.

For most people water consumption is bath/shower every day or two, washing dishes, washing clothes, flushing toilets, and a few other things like drinking that are negligable. Not much low-hanging fruit before conservation is asking people to compromise their health.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122068010#Comment_122068010

I gave you the statastics that show as a nation we are not wasters of water.

If you want to believe what somebody in the pub told you it`s no skin off my nose.

Furze99

Metered water charges would be very beneficial in terms of both funding Irish Water in their work and also in encouraging more careful use of valuable water. They will surely become essential for Greater Dublin.

This is one green concept that makes great sense and should be explained & implemented across the board.

cute geoge

How can Dublin area be short of water ,it is raining nearly all year but the real reason is because all the sewage flowing in to the Liffey .Why don't the EPA and Irish water do something about this problem

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122069488#Comment_122069488

Metering does little or nothing to reduce water usage. You have only to look at the list of countries I have provided you with to see that. And who in their right mind would favor giving money to Uisce Eireann to build a pipeline between the Shannon and Dublin to pump water from the Shannon to have 40% of it leaking away from defective mains ?

The figure for waste water mains is most likely much worse and is a threat to public health and the environment. Under the moniker of Irish Water the company was never fit for purpose. A change of name and sognage at the taxpayers expense hasn`t changed that.

Larbre34

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122069488#Comment_122069488

Please tell me you recall what happened when this was put to an already broken people, in 2014 and '15?

Asking people to pay for direct consumption out of a broken system is like a bus service with no floor, or only half the street lights working.

Ireland is creating a €10 billion surplus and building sovereign wealth investment funds as we speak. They can bloody well go and reinvest some of that capital in a nationwide comprehensive overhaul of water capture, treatment and distribution all over the State, before even thinking about asking for subscription to a decrepit network.

The same goes for green energy and sustainable transport solutions. Between the State and private enterprise the money exists many times over to bring all the infrastructure on this island up to a 21st Century standard. And I can promise that there will be no national 'green' buy-in, so long as Eamon Ryan and his fellow travellers seek to foist the greatest share of the cost of transition on ordinary people, already dealing with inflation and cost of living consequences, as well as a skewed taxation system. Its a very simple political reality that too many parties, NGOs and commentators in Ireland are failing to grasp.

JRant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122070304#Comment_122070304

Let's not forget that water rates were incorporated into general taxation years ago so this notion we don't already pay for it is plain wrong. It's like how the USC was originally planned to be a temporary tax and we know how that went. The government already get enough money from people, they are just terrible at using it. Giving them more money is not the solution.

Larbre34

True that. It goes back to the plentiful evidence, in every unit of the Civil and Public service that what Ireland Inc. is poorest at, is project management.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122069488#Comment_122069488

Unless they guarantee that Irish waters stakeholders will be at least 95% government owned and most profits get pumped back into the infrastructure then I won’t agree to it.
Also they would have to guarantee our water supplies could not be sold off and privatised.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122070304#Comment_122070304

One of the principle points of metered water charges is to fix and maintain the system and to encourage conservation. Win win.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122071069#Comment_122071069

That thing about 'water rates were incorporated into general taxation' is well past it's sell by date and just old schtick now. As an argument it doesn't hold water, times have moved on. Public water & sewage is under increasing strain in big urban areas. Long past time to bite the bullet and bring in charge by usage.

JRant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122075117#Comment_122075117

An inconvenient truth if you will.

Reduce general taxation and then we can discuss funding through a new rates based system.

Dr Turk Turkelton

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122051026#Comment_122051026

I was passing today so I stopped to take a pic at the corner of the estate.

I don't know much about farmland but it doesn't look great to me- perhaps someone with more knowledge could advise?

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122075263#Comment_122075263

Other than using it to farm snipes you wouldn`t raise much else on it, and you won`t make a living out of snipe other than charging people for shooting them.

creedp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122075238#Comment_122075238

Same issue with that great FG Universal Health Insurance swizz which would have involved an additional couple of thousand per person in Health insurance premium without a corresponding reduction in general taxation. Taking people for fools. Same with water. How do people think public water supply is currently funded? From fresh air maybe?

Beta Ray Bill

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122075117#Comment_122075117

I'd have no problem paying for water so long as the infra in its entirety stays in full state control and ownership, absolutely no privatization what so ever of any part of it: Dams, pipes, pumps, billing, treatment, management, etc. nothing can ever be privatized.

zerosquared

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122080736#Comment_122080736

and is clearly stated as such in constitution, we’ve seen how temporary taxes like USC become permanent and only ever go up

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122080736#Comment_122080736

Sure, there's no need to privatise public water/ sewage services and it's not on any agenda as far as I know. Irish Water is a public body. The idea that it might being prepared for selling off was a convenient invention of Paul Murphy et al.

Beta Ray Bill

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122081201#Comment_122081201

We gauge/guess future outcomes based on what has happened in the past.

It would have happened at some point, there's a heap of stuff they've outsourced/sold off. All the government had to do was put in a legal guarantee that it could not be sold off and that would have sufficed. We have a similar thing in place about the discussion/generation of Nuclear Power in Ireland.

Generation of electricity using fission is prohibited as is mining for nuclear elements. (Pretty sure the Green party pushed this through)

roosterman71

Don't forget, the carbon tax goes up today

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2024/0501/1446656-carbon-tax-increase/

Don't forget that the majority of this money goes via social welfare on the fuel allowances, most of which is spent on fossil fuels

ps200306

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122081531#Comment_122081531

Generation of electricity using fission is prohibited as is mining for
nuclear elements. (Pretty sure the Green party pushed this through)

We also banned fracking, the technology responsible for the majority of CO2 emission reductions in the USA.

ps200306

The sheer unadulterated nuttiness of current approaches is highlighted in this ESG Briefing from the Biz Post. We reduced emissions last year through dodgy accounting, by importing someone else's electricity without their carbon. But our carbon budget is banjaxed anyway. To hit our next target we'd have to reduce emissions each year by nearly three times the amount they went down during the pandemic.🫤

There’s good news and news [sic] contained in the latest Irish energy figures for 2023.

The good news first. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland’s (SEAI) interim 2023 energy balance report for the country showed that energy emissions reduced by 7.3 per cent last year, reaching their lowest level in 30 years.

These impressive figures were primarily driven by an unprecedented 21 per cent drop in electricity emissions in 2023, due to a 12-fold increase in the importation of electricity through interconnectors with the UK, as well as some increased renewable generation in Ireland.

The most unexpected element of this was due to the increased importation of electricity from the UK, as the British carbon price plummeted. Despite this electricity not being emission free, it is counted as zero emissions here, as it is considered to be part of the EU’s energy inventory, and not ours. This makes the level of electricity reductions somewhat superficial, but nevertheless reflects how successful interconnection can help Ireland’s energy mix.

Ireland also set new highs for wind generation, solar generation, heat pump installations, electric vehicle registrations, and biofuel blending in 2023. Solar electricity alone increased by over 300 per cent in 2023, but it still accounted for just 1.9 per cent of Ireland’s electricity supply, showing just how much more progress needs to be made.

Then there’s the bad news.

Despite the evident progress, Ireland is not on track to meet its first carbon budget by the end of 2025. The SEAI’s analysis indicates that annual reductions of more than 11 per cent in energy and industry emissions for 2024, and 2025, are needed if Ireland is to keep within the combined energy sectoral emission ceilings for electricity, transport, built environment, and industry in the first carbon budget. And don’t forget this analysis leaves out agriculture-related emissions, which are non-energy related

It is clear that not enough progress is being made in any sector, but transport is singled out as the sector where collective action is needed “urgently”. Transport were up by 0.2 per cent in 2023, and that increase was dampened somewhat by the introduction of biofuel blends.

The parting message from the SEAI is that while progress is being made, Ireland was already 60 per cent through the 2021-2025 carbon budget by the end of 2023. That means without a dramatic change in direction this year,  Ireland’s first carbon budget is almost certainly set to slip out of reach.

machiavellianme

37GW of Offshore wind by 2050 continues per ER's latest brain dump. Still no costs for it and still no views on where it goes but apparently it could sum up to €69 billion Gross Value Add, of which €8.8 billion would be accrued to the state from interconnectors. It's weird that he can say how much it might be worth 4 times in the document and how levies and rates might be applied but not even a ballpark of how much it would cost? Considering we're a net importer these days (even during high wind or solar) this is shaping up to make the North's "cash for ash" scheme look positiively inspired.

For example, yesterday, the day this was launched, Dutch Day ahead market prices at the peak were -€200/MWh, ie you pay 200 for every MW you generate, (not the other way around) or to put it another way, you are paid 200 to use electricity. The rest of Europe was a bargain -€180 by comparison whilst GB was +€40/MWh so was basically importing every last MW it could from the continent. Of course we were double that again at €90/MWh so we were importing everything we could from GB in turn. But yeah, somehow our 37GW will go the other way?

https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/6b24a-minister-ryan-launches-future-framework-for-offshore-renewable-energy/

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Kincora2017

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122081531#Comment_122081531

Was an FF/PD government who passed that. The reality is though, and not to rehash other threads in this one, that nuclear has zero political backing in this country. Only the Workers Party, (0.05% of the National vote and 0 seats at the last General Election)have a pro-nuclear platform.

twinytwo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122069544#Comment_122069544

when was the last time a resevoir was built?

zerosquared

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122088084#Comment_122088084

Technology responsible for most of our electricity too as we import gas heavily especially when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun (oh well its Ireland, what’s this sun thing)

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122088451#Comment_122088451

If politicians are serious about reducing emissions then they may need to rethink that.

We are not going to come even close to achieving emissions target, the 37GW offshore wind/hydrogen plan they cannot even give a price for, and even if the could it wouldn`t matter as it again is nowhere close to providing our projected demands, and now Eamon Ryan has admitted that the great bonanza of wind power from floating turbines in the Atlantic he has beeen waffling on about for years is just more smoke and mirrors.

Attitudes to nuclear have changed a lot in Ireland. 2021 A Think Ireland survey of 1,200 people on the question "Should Ireland buils a nuclear power station to increase clean energy supplies" found 43% in favour, 43% opposed, 14% had no opinion and 60% of those aged between 18-24 were in favour.