Paul Murphy
Dublin South-West · People Before Profit-Solidarity · Ireland
“The Minister of State assured us we are bound by international law but then went on to talk about the fact that he wants to deploy troops outside the framework of international law. That is why the Government is getting rid of the triple lock. All the triple lock does is ensure that we only can send troops in line with international law.”
“The case for MetroLink south west is extremely strong. There are 350,000 people living between the Luas red and green lines. That is who will be served by this.”
“Hopefully the junior Minister will be able to clarify. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, said earlier to Deputy Ó Laoghaire, "The people I speak to do not like the fact that Russia has essentially removed, or will remove in the coming months, all our peacekeeping troops from UNIFIL".”
“I, too, want to ask about the senior Minister. This came up at the Dáil reform committee last week. It is very peculiar that a senior Minister is here and has answered previous questions on the triple lock today and then – no offence meant - we have the junior Minister answering these questions, which precisely prevents the continuation o…”
“Its defence is that we should not worry because the Government is only going to send them as part of an international force. I do not think anyone here thinks the Government is going to invade a country all by itself.”
“It is there in black and white in the programme for Government and the Government needs to live up to its commitment to do a new, properly independent feasibility study. I appeal to the Minister of State to ask the Minister for Transport to meet with the metro south west group which has been doing such excellent campaigning on this issue.”
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“How can anyone say that a state that is committing genocide, a state that is built on apartheid, forcible ethnic cleansing and throwing people out of their land, should not be boycotted, divested from and sanctioned? I return to a point Deputy Boyd Barrett made. This strategy of words without actions is getting the Government into a very significant legal problem. It has a problem because it chose to use a particular, strong word, which we pushed it for a long time to use and which we welcomed. I refer to the Government's formal statement that Israel is committing genocide. The Taoiseach first formally stated that in May 2025. The Minister cannot say she does not know Israel is committing genocide, because the Government has declared that Israel is committing genocide.”
“The Dáil voted for the Bill to be enacted by last Christmas and to include provision for goods and services. The Minister has used her position not to progress the Bill but to delay it. The Government has supposedly been conducting an examination for two years into illegal flights through our airspace conveying weapons to be used by the Israel Defense Forces. I put down a parliamentary question about the progress of that examination every few months. It is apparently still ongoing and the Minister cannot tell me when it might end. The strategy of the Government is words without actions. Before us this evening is a proposal for meaningful action but the Minister says it would amount to boycott, divestment and sanctions on the State of Israel. To this I say, "Yes, that is precisely what we need".”
“In effect, however, it will refuse to do anything. That is why eight years have passed without any progress on Senator Black's occupied territories Bill. The Minister tells us she is committed to progressing the Bill. That is a joke and everyone knows it is a joke. She cannot stand there and ensure us the Bill will come through when she has devoted her energies to watering it down, slowing it down and, in my view, trying to block it. That is being done entirely against the wishes of the all-party foreign affairs committee, which has said it needs to be enacted quickly and to include both trade and services. It is being done against the vote of the Dáil. Last year, the motion we brought forward on the occupied territories Bill was passed unanimously by the House.”
“Ministers have no problem giving us words. What the Government has a problem with is action, and any action at that. The Government is in a difficult political position. On the one hand are people like those in the Gallery and the tens of thousands who have come out again and again to protest for Palestine. That massive public support for Palestine is one side of it. On the other side is the Government's increasing integration into US imperialism, its connection with and reliance on US multinationals and, therefore, the massive pressure on it not to do anything to upset Donald Trump and US capitalism. The Government has tried to untie that Gordian knot by deciding on a strategy of rhetoric without action. It will call what is happening genocide, which is very good and very important, and it will condemn and speak out about it.”
“The Minister's speech really encapsulates the cynicism of the Government on the issue of Palestine. The written copies of her speech include, in two places, references to the start and end of media clips. It is the first time I have seen that. It encapsulates the Government's approach. One of the clips includes the Minister talking about all the good stuff the Government is going to do at a European level and how hopeful she is about the things happening at EU level. The clip ends with a statement that the Government cannot support this Bill in its current form. However, there is no need to worry: nobody should mistake opposition to this Bill for silence or indifference. I do not think the Government is going to be silent in any case. It is part of its approach that we will keep getting lots of words.”
“Looking at the programme for Government and the Housing Commission report, there are references to merging social and cost-rental housing over time, and this new report from the Department of housing talks about changes to facilitate closer alignment with market rent. In other words, get rid of social housing, effectively, and have people paying these completely unaffordable rates. How are people meant to be able to afford massive increases in their rents at a time of a cost-of-living crisis?”
“I have just received notice of what will be proposed for a massive increase in council rent in South Dublin County Council. It is looking to increase the basic rate of council rent by 25%. It will mean thousands of euro extra per year for many families at a time of a cost-of-living crisis that people simply will not be able to afford. It is not just South Dublin County Council. We have seen this in Dublin City Council where rents have been increased by almost 30% - there is huge resistance and opposition to that - and it has happened in other councils across the country. This is not happening just accidentally in multiple places across the country; it is coming from the Government.”
“I am making this speech to warn everyone who is watching that what we are experiencing right now is a key moment of corporate takeover. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the right-wing Independents are lapping it up like the corporate lapdogs that they are. We have to wake up and stop the Collisons before it is too late. This amendment is a very small step towards doing that.”
“Progress Ireland's innovation policy lead, Sam Enright, recently hosted a conference to discuss whether Milton Friedman was the greatest economist of all time. The fact that he was the architect of Pinochet's neoliberal reforms in Chile, which would only be enforced by a military coup and brutal dictatorship during which an estimated 40,000 people were tortured, is no problem for these guys. If anything, as the Collisons' attitude to Israel shows, it is probably a plus. When Progress Ireland launched an appeal for funding, it bragged that, "Ireland is highly conformist and is more prone to deference to elite or expert consensus than our British counterparts." That was said to be a positive in its pitch for funding.”
“For decades, they have bankrolled and astroturfed for far right, neoliberal and libertarian causes around the world, including Javier Milei in Argentina, climate denialism, and, of course, Donald Trump. Ninety-year-old Charles Koch, the closest thing to a real-life Mr. Burns off "The Simpsons", is an idol for these people. Last summer, Patrick Collison gave a keynote address at a gathering of libertarians in Washington, DC, where he eulogised Charles Koch as inspirational. The Ayn Rand Institute, the Cato Institute, the Adam Smith Institute, and the Mercatus Center, all shadowy, Koch-funded, right-wing think tanks, are co-thinkers and fellow travellers of Progress Ireland, with 1,000 ties that bind them together. It is genuinely scary stuff. The Government will oppose this amendment which is about a modicum of democratic oversight.”
“Presumably the Minister will oppose a modicum of democratic oversight as proposed by these amendments. It does not take a genius to know what this will mean. It will mean data centres driving household electricity costs even higher, hoovering up all the renewables that are added to the grid, just like they have been doing for the past ten years. The next item on their agenda is normalising nuclear power. The mindless parrots over on the Government benches are singing along to that tune now too. The last we heard of the Collisons was them jogging through Tel Aviv, tweeting that it is great to be back, during a genocide. These Zionists are disciples of the notorious Koch brothers.”
“These are modest amendments reinstituting some form of democratic oversight. I presume the Government is going to oppose them, because the whole purpose of the Bill from the Government's perspective is to gut democratic oversight and democratic input into the planning system. The public should know where this is coming from. The Collison brothers, two filthy-rich Irish billionaires, have developed seriously undue influence over the Irish Government via the neolibertarian think-tank, Progress Ireland. First, it was changing the law to allow landlords to rent out beds in sheds by getting rid of planning permission for cabins in back gardens. Now, they are driving this Bill to gut democratic input into the planning system so that what tech billionaires see as critical infrastructure can bypass normal democratic checks and balances.”
“The Currency reported today that, at the height of the genocide in 2024, the Department of trade authorised the export of €20 million euro worth of military-capable so-called dual-use goods, not just to Israel, but specifically to the Israel Defense Forces, IDF, or Israel's Ministry of Defense. What on earth was the Department doing sanctioning the sale of these goods, potentially for military use, to those organisations involved at the time of the mass slaughter of Palestinians? Did the Minister know anything about it at the time? Did he sign off on it? Did the Taoiseach know anything about it? Does this not make the case for full sanctions on Israel and for no trade with this apartheid and genocidal state, which is contained in our Bill that will be debated tomorrow?”
“It is a nationally driven project. We can look at the Government's programme for Government increasing council rents. We can look at this new programme, which has not been published yet, which points to massive increases in council rents. We can look towards the plan to merge cost-rental and social housing.”
“On Bertie Ahern, I will just say this. What people say when they do not think they are being recorded is actually more valuable than what they say when they know they are being recorded. It suggests a dirty game used on doorsteps by Fianna Fáil to divide and rule ordinary people, and to have them not blaming the people the Taoiseach represents - the developers, the landlords, the people who get rich from the housing crisis. Instead, it is better to blame the people from Congo or wherever else. Regarding the council flats and the rents issue, the Taoiseach cannot have it both ways. He is the Taoiseach; the leader of a party which has councillors. He has a responsibility and a connection with the votes, for example, to increase council rents. Does he stand over those increases or not? They are not doing that out of nowhere.”
“Councillors from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour and the Green Party shamefully voted against a budget amendment that would have stopped that rent hike. I have two simple questions for the Taoiseach. I want answers to them. First, will he commit to the residents of Sheridan Court and other flats around Dublin city that this treatment will not continue and that people in 2026 will not be asked to live like this? Second, will he support a reversal of these unfair rent increases in Dublin city and drop his agenda to hike council rents right across the country?”
“She has to bring her children to her mother's house in Fairview to bathe them. Her bedroom is severely damp and mouldy. I am holding up a photo of her bathroom - we can see the mould. Another woman is sleeping in the living room as her bedroom has been rendered uninhabitable due to leakages in the ceilings and walls. This is a photo of the hole in the wall of her bedroom. Another resident's ceiling collapsed in places in January. Her flat is not in a livable condition but she has nowhere else to go. Her ceiling can be seen in this photo. The only work done for the people in Sheridan Court has been superficial. However, it is not just Sheridan Court; it is right across Dublin city. To add insult to injury, Dublin City Council has hiked these people's rents by 30%, an amount that many of them simply cannot afford.”
“Muslim children did not crash the economy, causing years of misery and austerity for ordinary people. Unlike Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, they never rolled out the red carpet for developers and vulture funds. They are not the ones who sowed the seeds of the current housing disaster and they were not the ones who refused to maintain council flats and then voted to increase council rents. All of this is an act of mass distraction. From what? From the horrendous conditions many people in Dublin Central are forced to face every day. Right across Dublin city there are council tenants living in conditions that nobody should be asked to live in. Yesterday, in Sheridan Court on Dorset Street, we met a single mother with two children with additional needs. She is three months living without usable water because it is scalding hot.”
“Fianna Fáil's former leader and Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, has engaged in disgusting racism in Dublin Central, saying we have “too many” immigrants and saying, "The ones I worry about are the Africans", and that, "We can’t be taking in people from the Congo and all these places." He said he worries about the next generation of Muslims. Bertie Ahern doing it makes the agenda very blatant: scapegoat immigrants and divide ordinary people. Why? So that nobody blames Bertie Ahern, Fianna Fáil and the landlords and developers Fianna Fáil has allowed to profit from the housing crisis. People from the Congo did not take corrupt payments from developers to blow up the property bubble. They were never found by a tribunal to have been untruthful in explaining how €400,000 in today's money passed through their bank accounts.”
“They want to turn them back into handmaidens. We have to take the fight to them, and that means fighting for the right to choose and nothing less.”
“She could find out that the foetus has a severe but non-fatal anomaly that means their child would need around-the-clock care for their whole life. None of that matters as far as our abortion law is concerned. Twelve weeks and that is it. After 12 weeks pregnant women in Ireland are still treated as vessels with no right to bodily autonomy, even though the foetus will not be viable for months. After 12 weeks, pregnant people are still forced to travel. The Government refuses to act. By 2030, over 1,300 women will be forced to travel. We have to stop that happening. We need a renewed abortion rights movement to do it. Just like Trump in the US, the far right here, the conservative politicians in Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Aontú and Independent Ireland and many Independents want to take away women's hard-won rights.”
“We also favour deleting section 23 in order that abortion is fully decriminalised in line with other medical procedures. People Before Profit would go further. Neither this Bill nor the official review actually gives pregnant people the right to choose. That right is still strictly time limited, ending abruptly at 12 weeks. That is regardless of when the woman finds out they are pregnant or even if they know that they pregnant at all. A relationship could break down after 12 weeks. Intimate partner violence - which happens in the case of one in eight pregnancies in Ireland - is more likely to begin during pregnancy. The woman could lose her job or become homeless. One of her other children could be diagnosed with a serious illness.”
“I thank the Social Democrats for bringing forward this Bill, which People Before Profit supports. It really is the bare minimum the Government should be doing to implement the recommendations of its own official review of the abortion law. The review recommended decriminalising abortion, reviewing the treatment of fatal foetal anomalies in order that women in this terrible situation are not forced to travel and abolishing the patronising and medically useless three-day wait. The Bill mostly does all of that. There are details that could be ironed out on Committee Stage. We would prefer to abolish the three-day wait entirely rather than making it optional. Women are perfectly capable of taking as much time as they need to make their own decisions without needing for that to be legislated for.”
“The Taoiseach rightly says that Israel has committed genocide in Palestine. I do not know whether he accepts that Israel is still committing genocide in Palestine but surely that has to mean something in terms of what he does. Surely it is a contradiction for him to say that Israel is committing genocide and then spend his time trying to ensure we do nothing to punish, impact or prevent the continuation of that genocide. Does the convention on genocide mean anything to the Taoiseach? If it does, he will vote to support our Bill for comprehensive sanctions on Israel. The idea that a state can continue in this way without comprehensive sanctions by any state that claims to stand up for human rights makes no sense whatsoever.”
“We need retrofitting as quickly and as much as possible. It is part of the answer to the cost-of-living crisis and the climate crisis. The problem is that the way the Government has gone about it with its privatised model is now beginning to result in significant problems. I will give a few examples from my constituency. Philomena Doran, a 92-year-old widow in Oldbawn, got a 100% grant to get wraparound external wall insulation, but the external wall insulation was put on during Storm Chandra, when the building advice states clearly that it cannot be put on when it is raining. She went to the SEAI and got nowhere.”
“It says the average apprentice will have at least one child to support and that 60% are renting. They have rent and mortgages to pay. They also have to pay for their own tools, which can cost €1,000 or more in some cases. They often have to relocate around the country and pay course fees as well. How are they meant to survive on less than €8 an hour? It is an absolute joke. It is also proof that the Government is not serious about fixing the housing crisis. It should be doing everything in its power to attract young workers to take up apprenticeships rather than legalising this super-exploitation.”
“I had to listen to some of them in the committee that deals with this area. ISME, the Irish SME Association, has claimed that exploiting young people in this way " is of greater long-run benefit and importance for poorer social classes where education is their way out of lower-skilled employments." It also claimed that paying young workers the national minimum wage might cause them to "favour gratification". This is the type of attitude towards young people we are dealing with. It is like something out of the Dark Ages. What is also out of the Dark Ages are the levels of pay being paid to apprentices. First-year craft apprentices are being paid €7.67 an hour, which is €6.48 less than the national minimum wage. That is disgraceful. Their union, Connect, says that apprentices now usually start in their 20s rather than their teens.”
“They have ignored the recommendation of the Low Pay Commission and the vote of this Dáil to do away with these sub-minimum wage rates. They are doubling down on shafting young people on pay just like they are shafting them on housing and the cost of living. Research by the ESRI has shown that the percentage of workers on these super-low and super-exploitative rates of pay has doubled since 2020. The national minimum wage has gone up, although it is still entirely inadequate. The result is that greedy employers are using sub-minimum wage rates for young people as a loophole to get out of paying even that inadequate minimum wage. We have gone from 20% of young workers being paid sub-minimum rates in 2020 to 30% now, a massive jump of about 30,000 young people. The justifications used by bosses for this are outrageous.”
“I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the National Minimum Wage Act 2000 to provide for apprentices and young workers to be paid at least the National Minimum Wage. I will share time with Deputy Boyd Barrett. I am glad to be introducing this Bill. It is a Bill to end the super-exploitation of young workers and apprentices. We introduced a similar Bill in the last Dáil to abolish sub-minimum wage rates for workers aged under 20. At the time, the Government claimed to be looking into abolishing these super-low rates of pay. A young worker can be paid as little as €9.91 an hour, which is €4.24 less than the national minimum wage. Of course, in reality, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have done nothing of the sort.”
“It is time for this State to act. The Government knows that public opinion is strongly in favour of that. Will it ignore that as well as the genocide or will it finally take meaningful action? Will it allow a conscience vote on our Bill? If the Government can have a conscience vote on the issue of abortion, why can it not have one on the issue of genocide?”
“Nothing to sanction the State of Israel. Let us compare that to how swiftly sanctions were imposed on Russia after its illegal invasion of Ukraine, proving that it can do it, but instead it has spectated while the genocide has continued. It has looked on as European countries are some of the biggest, after the US, deliverers of weapons to Israel and it has treated Israel as a favoured nation in terms of trade, effectively equivalent to as if it was in the European Union. The Government has delayed and refused to act on the occupied territories Bill. Why? Cowardice and a calculated decision to prioritise financial ties with Israel and the US over human life. That is why we are moving our Bill next week for comprehensive sanctions on the State of Israel. Why? Because of genocide, apartheid and crimes against humanity.”
“We are two and a half years into an accelerated genocide carried out by Israel against the Palestinians. There is a so-called ceasefire now, but people in Gaza are being murdered every single day. Documented killings in Gaza now stand at over 72,000 people, with 21,000 children, which is the highest percentage death toll of children in any war. UNICEF has said that tens of thousands of babies born in Gaza since the start of the war have been delivered into hell. As of February last year, 25,000 wounded children had no surviving family. The reality is going to be worse than all of those nightmarish figures when the truth comes out. Israel has resumed its slaughter of civilians in Lebanon. It is breaking its ceasefire there on a daily basis too. What is the European Union doing about any of that? Nothing.”
“Let us not hear talk about the European Union being a bastion of democracy when the most powerful, dominant state in the Union, Germany, right now is treating people, including an Irish citizen, Daniel Tatlow-Devally, as a terrorist for an act of civil disobedience. It is treating people as terrorists for honourable, legal acts of civil disobedience trying to prevent the continued commission of genocide. The speaking of Irish is banned by the German state at Palestine protests. Let us not hear about fundamental rights when the Fortress Europe project is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in the Mediterranean Sea every single year. It is an absolute joke and, of course, there is no greater illustration of this gap between the rhetoric we hear once a year or more often, unfortunately, and the reality of the situation in Gaza.”
“We heard earlier from Deputy McAuliffe that he would prefer if the European Union really did something about the genocide but, at the same time, he accepts that, well, that is it and different people have different opinions and so on. Do not try to claim that it is a peace project if it is involved in supporting, facilitating and arming genocide. Let us drop the pretence that it is a peace project when it has a strategy called ReArm Europe and when it is, as Deputy Boyd Barrett outlined, a driving factor in the process of militarisation, which the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, tried to deny by suggesting it is somehow not true. It is there in black and white. He can go and read their strategy documents. He can look at the figures in terms of the extra amounts spent.”
“I have participated in a lot of Europe Day debates. In fact, the first time I ever spoke in the Dáil was before I was a TD when as an MEP I was invited to address the House on Europe Day. Of all the set piece annual debates we have, this is the most sickening. Every time we get the same platitudes trotted out about Europe being a peace project and the European Union being a defender of democracy and being founded on the basis of fundamental rights. This bears no resemblance to the actually existing European Union. In particular, in terms of the biggest crime that is happening now in the world, namely, the genocide that been going on in Palestine for more than two years and the EU's role in that. We are all expected to just ignore that.”
“South Dublin County Council is raising a fair bit more in rents than it is actually spending in maintenance. It has no excuse for not providing it. I will give one example; the council includes in its expenditure the money that comes from central government for retrofitting, which is about €7 million a year. The council is including that in its own expenditure to try to pretend it is making less. The truth is that it is taking a lot more in rent than in maintenance. It does not need to increase the rents; there is no argument for it whatsoever.”
“The idea of having insulation or whatever in that context is obviously a complete joke. Just as in Dublin city, Fingal and Galway, the management in South Dublin County Council, with the presumed agreement of the ruling group, is planning to go for big rent increases. The council has produced a PowerPoint presentation to outline its case. Effectively, it is trying to suggest that just as in Dublin city, the council takes in less in rent than it spends in maintenance. It is not true. When you go through the figures, you see that it is not true whatsoever. The council is adding in all sorts of extra expenses - I will go into some of it for a second - to try to create that impression. Dublin City Council has said that it is not getting enough in rents so it has to increase them, and then it will improve maintenance.”
“The mistake can be righted at the next budget. There is a big campaign to ask people to reverse it. Ultimately, the vote was lost by one vote. There was an amendment to say we should not be increasing people's rents and should instead be hitting the big companies by introducing what is effectively a differential rates scheme. It can be reversed for next year. We need commitments from Labour and the Greens to do that, as opposed to charging people more. I wish to speak for a moment about South Dublin County Council. In my constituency we do not have that many social housing flats. Obviously, we have lots of social houses and the same sorts of issues apply. The biggest issue is people waiting for years and years for windows and doors that are necessary. There are gale-force winds passing through their houses.”
“It is outrageous. The main responsibility for that goes to central government for not properly funding our councils, but there is a lesson here for Labour and the Greens in particular because it was a horrendous mistake to vote to increase these people's rents.”
“What we have heard about the Oliver Bond Street complex is outrageous. People have had their time wasted, have been led up the garden path and then have been left waiting again in horrific conditions because of what is effectively a tick-box approach to resolving the housing crisis, as opposed to dealing with the situations people are facing. It is outrageous that people who are living in such poor conditions have been asked, forced or compelled to pay even more in rent. It is outrageous that the argument for them to pay more in rent to Dublin City Council – an average increase of 30% - is wrapped up in the language of the council wanting to be a good landlord. It wants to be a good landlord so it has left people living in crap for years and years or even decades, and now it wants them to pay more for the privilege of it.”
“I have had the pleasure over the last number of months of visiting a lot of flats in the north inner city. This is in the context of both the by-election and the campaign against the rent increases, which is a Dublin-wide campaign even though we are at different phases. It is interesting to hear the TDs from the constituency talk because what strikes you is the very deep sense of community due to people living so close together. It is a very strong sense of community and solidarity. These are really great people. That is on the one hand, but what also strikes you is the pretty horrific conditions in which people have to live in 2026. There is mould everywhere. There are stories of people repainting their flats over and over. There are rats. Obviously there is overcrowding, which is chronic across the city. It is utterly unacceptable.”
“Workers need to prepare for a massive day of action. Preparation for that will start tomorrow at the May Day protest at 6.30 p.m. at Parnell Square in town but that needs to be just the first step towards a major national day.”
“We need universal measures like price caps, a €500 energy credit to every household and funded by the data centres which are using more electricity than all our households put together and yet are paying half the price of the electricity that ordinary people pay. We also need measures to move us away from reliance on fossil fuels, which is what has put us into this position in the first place, such as free public transport, the rollout of retrofitting, solar panels, free attic insulation and so on. That would move us off the reliance on fossil fuels that the Government has got us into. However, there is a lesson from the protests which is that unless you can cause significant destructive action, if you are not a fast-food giant, a developer or a major multinational like Google, the Government is not going to listen to you.”
“The problem is the original measures the Government brought in a couple of months ago were wiped out, as we predicted, by the rise in the international price of oil and what has been done recently can be wiped out again. The only way to give people security and to cut across the profiteering we are seeing, for example, on an international scale with BP, which doubled its profits in the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of last year, is to do these price controls. That is an immediate measure to give people security and to stop the profiteering taking place. That needs to happen. Workers need to be on the streets to demand that happens and to say we need to have universal measures, not measures that benefit businesses.”
“There is some benefit now, but that could be wiped away tomorrow by Trump's deepening imperialist adventures in the Middle East. However, the other half of the package is for businesses; it is not for ordinary people at all. The lion's share of those supports will go not to small businesses, which were involved in many of the protests, but instead to the big businesses. That is who the Government is looking out for all the time. The Government often likes to say in here that the Opposition only has criticism and we do not have any solutions but the key immediate answer to the fuel crisis is something we have been calling for well over two years now. We have had legislation for it for well over two years, which is the idea of price caps and is precisely the main demand of the fuel protestors.”
“The most incredible statistic, which I say over and over again, is the fact that four in ten parents in this country, which is one of the richest countries in the world, say that they are either going without meals or cutting back on their meal sizes so that their kids can have enough to eat it. It is absolutely scandalous. Many of these people rightly went out to support the fuel protests. There was a collection taken in the flats, and they brought down sandwiches, tea and coffee to the protesters to say "Fair play", because they said that someone was standing up to the Government and calling for action on fuel prices. If we look at what the Government has given, with regard to the €500 million package, ordinary people get some benefit in terms of reductions of taxes on petrol and diesel with tiny reductions in terms of home heating oil.”
“I was calling round to people's houses in Dublin Central the other night and met a woman who said to me "Everything's going up. My rent is going up" - she is a Dublin City Council tenant - "The price of petrol is going up. Groceries are going up. Everything is going up except for my wages." She is right. Statistically, that is the case. Prices are up almost a quarter over the past five years and people are really struggling out there. The Government's response suggests that it either does not get it or does not care. After housing costs, one in five people was at risk of poverty or lived in relative poverty last year, with over 300,000 people in arrears on and unable to afford to pay their electricity bills. That was before the coming increases hit.”
“In response to the fuel crisis, why not reinstate the 49 bus? There are examples from other parts of the city. We should be expanding routes and buses, not swapping one in for another.”
“There are 50 brand new electric buses still not being used. The issue that the Minister did not come back to is that each time we add one of the electric buses, we are withdrawing a diesel bus. Why on earth are we doing that? Why are we not having more buses in the system? That is what we need. We need a lot of more buses. Why are we scrapping routes? We introduced the BusConnects routes. That is fine. Why are we withdrawing other routes as a consequence of that? For example, in my constituency, there is a campaign to reinstate the 49 bus, which was cut when the F1 Busconnects route was introduced. It is a downgrade for a lot of people. It is taking people commuting to work to the city centre from Tallaght, Firhouse and Knocklyon an extra 20 to 30 minutes each way, which is ridiculous. It is driving people back into cars as a result.”
“Can the Minister not say to his Government colleagues that we should be prioritising charging our electric buses instead of giving all of our electricity to the data centres? Each time we add one of these electric buses to the fleet, we are taking one diesel bus out. Why on earth are we taking buses, regardless of what fuel they are, out of the fleet when we should be adding capacity? Regardless of what fuel they are, it is much better for people in public transport rather than sitting in individual cars.”