Search the record

Deputy very much for the invitation but I will be working here on the budget in relation to fuel and energy, so I do not need to attend a protest meeting. What I need to do is make sure that people in this country do not feel … decisions that will help them. By the way, I have also spoken to a number of the people who were involved in the fuel protests. I met many of them at the ploughing. I met many people at the ploughing and at the Longford show with Deputy Carrigy

small business people – nearly everyone – are really frustrated with the Government’s approach to helping people in this crisis. Following the fuel protests and growing public anger, the Government introduced limited temporary measures. They were welcomed by the people but now when we see the price of diesel … places, they are like snow off a ditch. They are gone and there is no impact at all from them. The reality is fuel is not a luxury. It is a necessity. Workers need to get to work. Farmers need machinery to plough and till their lands

enough. Even after the reductions, we are already back over €2 per litre of diesel, which is the level that prompted the fuel protests. Yesterday, we heard wholesale electricity prices are up 77%. We need price caps to give people security. We also need to abolish the carbon … centres. They are the ones causing and profiting from the climate crisis. However, we also need to get off our addiction to fossil fuels. We need to get people to switch to cleaner and cheaper renewable energy as quickly as possible and to use public transport or active

refusing to ask them to play their part, to do their bit, yet it expects individuals to do it. When we have fuel protests and people are lined up on the roads again, the Minister of State must understand that is actually at the core of what

Hardworking people in this country are saying that it is no longer worth it. I want to invite the Tánaiste to the fuel protest meeting in Moate on Sunday at 5.30 p.m. That meeting is being organised by ordinary hardworking people whose backs are against the wall

those surveyed leave for work before 7 a.m. and do not return until after 6.30 p.m. Because of the huge increases in fuel prices, they are paying a fortune for the privilege of doing so. That was the last census. With the huge increase in the number … need to see on the forecourts before this Government steps up? Nobody wants to see people forced to once again launch protests against fuel and energy prices, shutting the country down. I ask the Government to please not let us get to that point. We in Sinn Féin

Minister will remember, that boiled over into mass protest. The public had to force the Government to listen and act. People should not have to take to the streets again for the Government to do something to get surging fuel prices down. That is the Government

Fuel can keep rising but increasing the fuel cost and increasing the taxes on people we want to keep here will drive them out of the country all the time. On the other side of that, you have people protesting. People in this country cannot afford to protest

none, because these are the guys Independent Ireland Deputies want to cosy up to. Where have they been while we have been protesting against the hikes in public transport fares that are facing commuters, students, people with disabilities and people who cannot afford cars? They say they … them. An equally important point needs to be made: those pressures are being exacerbated and prolonged by Ireland’s continued dependence on fossil fuels, which the Deputies are seeking to subsidise indefinitely in this motion. The existence of a cost-of-living crisis does not remove the need