"Green" policies are destroying this country

Got a bit of a chuckle myself seeing Xi Jinping could not be arse turning up to COP20 with his country being the major supplier of solar panels that are being touted as the saviours of mankind, while they plough ahead with more coal fired stations.

I don't think that it is the correct way to achieve our climate targets, because the hidden climate cost of manufacture is too large. Better to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.

No they're not, because those maths do not exist. How can you possibly 'do the maths' on budgets a decade in the future that haven't even been considered yet, and how can they possibly weigh up the costs of these proposals versus the cost of adapting to climate change if we don't manage to keep it below 2c

To make an educated assessment, you need to weigh up the cost of mitigating and adapting to climate change if we start now, versus the costs if we do not mitigate climate change, and end up having to do a lot of emergency measures down the road.

They're not 'doing the maths' they're jumping to a conclusion, and where is that conclusion coming from? well, some of it is the fault of the government for not giving a clear outline of where this is going to be funded from, other parts of it are from false and misleading articles online and in certain media organisations

I agree, except instead of partying we put all of our resources into adapting to whatever is to come. Smarter use of our resources now, while we have cheap energy could do a lot to prepare us. Starting with not destroying ourselves with pointless targets. Because it’s coming, whether we buy millions of brand new electric cars or not.

I see now where your getting your information from, enough said if you listen to that shower of muppets if they had their way there would be no humans left in the countryside, nice images of Tir Na Nog from their city dwellings and the one trip they make outside of the city every year.

As I said it's no extra cost to the utility companies, if you need an extra pole from the ESB, you pay for it, same with ducting for cables, you need them you pay. plus the extra standing charges which are higher outside of city's

As for roads, one frosty night would do more damage to the road than 20 extra cars on a road for the year.

"The cost of providing infrastructure and services to dispersed rural housing is significantly more than to close knit communities in villages, towns and cities. A considerable amount of research has been carried out to identify some of the economic costs associated with rural one-off housing in Ireland. The following section provides an overview of the economic cost of rural one-off housing in relation to (i) Road provision; (ii) Public Transport; (iii) Postal Services; (iv) Electricity; and (v) Communications"

Roads:

"For example, 10 of the 31 local authorities in Ireland are estimated to have greater than half of housing classed as rural one-offs. All of these local authorities have an annual per capita spend on road maintenance of between €144 and €336 (€194 average). In contrast to this, 6 local authorities have a rural one-off rate less than 4% with per capita annual spend on road maintenance of between €49 and €92 (€60 average)."

Public Transport:

"The provision of public transport services in rural areas with highly dispersed settlement patterns is evidently much more expensive and inefficient often running at a net loss and requiring significant or complete subsidisation by the State."

Postal Services:

"Postal services to dispersed rural households are estimated to cost four times as much when compared to urban households. Consequently, there is a high level of cross-subsidisation between urban and rural customers."

Electricity:

"Electricity provision to rural areas is high due to the average fixed cost of capital investment and the cost of subsequent maintenance of a considerable length of power line. In addition, electricity is lost due to the length of the distribution network while voltage quality can also be adversely affected."

Communications:

"Costs for the provision of communications infrastructure are much higher per user in dispersed rural areas than for urban areas, but are borne by private operators rather than the public utility companies. Companies must cover this cost through their customer income and so this is largely transferred to all users irrespective of need. Consequently, one-off settlement adds to the costs borne by the wider population."

This is basic stuff that has been shown time and again by numerous studies.

It is a generalised insult. They usually appear when an argument runs out of road.

If you want to hear a good one, hear this. An post currently have a number of Cargo bikes they use for delivering small packages. They claim they've replaced their van fleet with them but low and behold all they've done is entered into an agreement with enterprise to outsource their fleet to a third party provider (I see them travelling around in them consistently). Greenwash and claim the tax subsidies, that's all most of that shite is about.

I heard the Greens were going to make it mandatory that you had to shoot a cow to get a booster shot.

Halve the national herd, increase covid immunity & probably turn a third of the population vegan while they are at it.

Dublin's Metrolink is proposed to cost 10 billion euros and will only service a small percentage of Ireland's total population so it seems like there should be plenty money there to service rural dwellers also.

Seriously all our major cities are already jammed with traffic day in day out, all you are advocating is some massive urban sprawl that will be as badly serviced with public transport as all our existing urban sprawl, how much do you think houses in Dublin would cost if you forced everyone working there to live within its boundaries?

I really don't understand why green advocates want people to live in grey boxes in a grey city with high crime rates instead of out in nature, I prefer trees and birds to junkies urinating on the footpath thanks.

The Greens are responsible for all the ills of this country don't you know. They are even responsible for FG's carbon tax and FG signing up to the Paris Agreement!

Absolute nonsense, the way that's laid out.

Transport. I already explained that one.

Public transport. None there in the first place.

Postal services. Postvan passes anyway so no extra expenses

Electricity. I already explained that it was all ready there so no extra expenses.

Communications. Now that's a good one, is that used for carrier pigeons or what.

What quangos do all these studies anyway, surely they are going to find what their paymasters want anyway.

The 2011 -2016 government attempted to set up an off the books separate entity for Irish Water but that never got off the ground because it was shot down by Eurostat. There is nothing in Irish legislation as far as I know or in European law to prevent a government ring fencing revenue within their own Department of Finance for the purpose of expenditure in defined specific areas.