Peadar Tóibín
Meath West · Aontú · Ireland
“Lonely Planet. It did a review of Dublin and stated, "Once Dublin’s grand boulevard, O'Connell St has struggled with decline". It stated that vacant buildings, derelict upper floors and long-stalled redevelopments leave this part looking neglected while retail has shifted elsewhere and been replaced by fast food shops that dilute its char…”
“The Irish people are a generous and decent people and have been over the past number of years, with the provision of supports to people from Ukraine who are fleeing the war. This is right and just. The war unleashed on Ukraine is absolutely wrong. Aontú will support the reduction in the rate of payment under the scheme.”
“I am very disappointed to see that the Government, the Social Democrats, the Labour Party, the Green Party and People Before Profit will vote against an amendment that wants to means test the payment, as an amendment also did on the previous occasion, and put it on a level footing with other housing assistance payments.”
“Landlords are rational and they will make economic decisions to best suit themselves. Landlords have been more inclined to take on Ukrainian tenants over Irish tenants in recent years. This system is discriminatory. It gives an advantage to guests in the country over the people who have lived here for most of their lives.”
“Anyone who sat the leaving certificate economics paper just a few weeks ago will know that demand also has a role. It determines what rents are, the price of houses, etc. It is physics and maths and not ideology. We need to get to a situation where we equalise supply with demand.”
“A global study by TomTom indicated that it is the 38th most congested city globally, behind cities such as London, Toronto and Rome. The task force indicated that the Cork Luas system would be built. That Luas system is in planning and that planning is taking a long while.”
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“The Government is going to need regulatory changes, which will need European changes too, to make sure we can get the infrastructure built in this country as well. I laughed out loud when I heard the Minister's statement about not weaponising the climate Act because it is an admission that the climate Act has been weaponised against development in this country, but who passed the climate Act? It is an admission that the Government parties did something really damaging to the development of this country.”
“I have spoken to the Minister's junior Ministers and they are telling me that this regulation is a major block in the building of homes. Midleton flood defences were promised in 2015. There is an elderly gentleman at the moment in Midleton who, when it rains heavily, stays awake at night as a human water gauge to make sure the water does not get to a certain level that people die. This is not going to speed up Midleton. Midleton is a habitats directive issue. Most of the flood defences in this country are habitats. The pearl mussel in Enniscorthy is going to be comfortable on the riverbed in Enniscorthy for another 15 years. The livelihoods of the people of Enniscorthy are not going to be comfortable and this Bill is not going to make a blind bit of difference to that.”
“We had representatives of the local authorities in front of the infrastructure committee and we asked did they have enough planners within the planning offices. They said they did not and that they needed another 500 planners in the system. Those are the practical elements. This is a lightweight Bill that, if we look at the enormity of the infrastructural deficit in this country and the damage it is doing to people, is an insult to that problem in reality. I am not confident. For example, most regulations are the same here. Yes, the climate Act is one change. There is no change to the habitat regulation in the context of the legislation. It is European. The Government will hold the Presidency of the European Commission for six months shortly.”
“I was sitting in front of them in that committee. They have delays still on the applications going through. I know of builders who are waiting 20 months for their application to go through. Why? Because it is not a priority application and therefore it is not getting through. Uisce Éireann officials were in front of the infrastructure committee a little while ago. I asked them how long it is going to take Uisce Éireann to fill the gaps in the water infrastructure in this country that are currently putting blockages on the building of homes. They said 2050 is the hold up. I do not see anything in this Bill that is going to change that necessarily, other that the prioritisation, which means it is a zero-sum situation. One project moves up and another project moves down. What resources will be added to the likes of An Coimisiún Pleanála?”
“There is nothing stopping a Minister in a Department addressing the elements of the planning process in more co-ordinated fashion, making sure that, for example, a planning application does not need to have 30,000 pages and does not need a van to bring it to the local authority or saying we do not need four different versions of the planning application and that we need one version of the planning application that is suitable for all the different agencies that are necessary for it to go through. There is no net capacity being put into this system in relation to this. What extra resources are going to be added? An Coimisiún Pleanála officials came before the committee and said they did not have enough staff to do the job they have to do. They did say that and the Minister should not shake his head.”
“It could be said that the climate Act change could affect some judicial reviews, but there is nothing in this Bill that, outside of that, will change the speed of that process. There is no net change in the speed of progress in the delivery of all those aspects. There are issues about co-operation and issues about different Departments. I welcome that and it is probably a good thing that is actually on a statutory legal level. I admit that, but there is no penalty if it does not happen. If the Minister tells a Department that it has to co-operate and do X,Y and Z in terms of co-ordination and it does not do it, what happens in that scenario? All of those issues are really departmental management issues anyway.”
“They know it is never going to be good enough because they do not have the ability to do it. This looks exactly the same. I am amazed by how light it is, by the lack of detail and the lack of elements in it. If we cut to the key element of the Bill, it will prioritise some projects over others. This Bill will raise some projects up the queue, which will mean other projects will go down the queue. There is no net development. If we look at what is happening at the moment and the real problems - and the Minister knows this too - we have the slowest planning processing, the slowest permitting, the slowest licensing, the slowest tendering and the slowest procurement in the EU, and judicial reviews are among the slowest and most held in this State. Nothing in the Bill that changes that. There is marginal stuff about judicial review.”
“It is interesting that at that moment in time the Minister for Health was asked when the hospital would open and she said the opening date is in the hands of BAM. The Minister is getting €200,000 a year in wages and she is not in control of the biggest infrastructure project delivery in Ireland. That is startling. I have read through this Bill. I do not see anything in this Bill at the moment that would speed up the national children's hospital. There is nothing in the Bill, when a project is in situ, that would actually make it happen faster. The other thing I was struck by when I read this Bill was that it looks like an Opposition party's Bill, which has no capacity to draft a Bill and put detail in it. All the Opposition parties, every now and again, introduce a Bill to generate a debate on an issue.”
“The lack of infrastructure has had an enormous impact on the human fabric and the community fabric right through Ireland. It was interesting that the day it was announced the national children's hospital was going to be delayed for the 18th time was the day the Government decided it was not going to have any pre-legislative scrutiny on this particular Bill. We had the enormous catastrophe that is the national children's hospital, an example of the Government getting everything wrong, and then the Government announcing a Bill and saying, "No, we don't need to actually to do pre-legislative scrutiny on this; it is not necessary." I do not know whether it is incompetence or laziness from the Government's perspective but that is what happened.”
“I will give an example of this in the Navan to Dublin rail line. Right now it is taking between two and three hours for people to get to and from work. I was listening to all the debates about the blockages of roads and how long it was taking for people to get around the country. I was just thinking people should just travel from Navan to Dublin for work every day and they would know exactly what it means to not be able to get to work on time. This means children are growing up with anxiety at the moment because they do not see their parents from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. Their parents only have about 20 minutes to half an hour to put their children to bed every night. Football clubs are going without volunteers because there is simply nobody around in the evenings to be able to train their kids because of these difficulties.”
“The national children's hospital, promised by Leo Varadkar by 2020 save an asteroid hitting the planet and to be delivered for €700 million, is still not open and has been delayed for the 18th time by the Government. A total of €300 million has been spent on metro north and not a shovel has been put in the ground as of yet. It is 20 years in the making. The Navan to Dublin rail line was promised in 1994 by the Minister's colleague, Noel Dempsey, and it will not be built any earlier than 2036. People will have started work when that project was announced and they will have retired before that project will be delivered. The damage the Government is doing to people's lives is an absolute disgrace. The lack of infrastructural development in this country is tearing at the very fabric of communities and lives.”
“Critical infrastructure gaps in this country are probably the worst legacy of the Government over the last number of years. This country is really poorly served by infrastructure. The Government's friends in the IMF say that Ireland lags by 32% behind our peers in terms of infrastructure delivery. The biggest cost on society is the fact that this Government cannot deliver infrastructure. For ten years after the crash, the Government spending was second-last from the bottom in terms of infrastructure. Only Romania spent less on infrastructural development than this country. Therefore, there was massive capital depreciation in Ireland as a result of the lack of investment by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. All of that has had enormous human consequences.”
“They cannot spread slurry with an electric car. The Government needs to ensure that people with no alternatives have a break that allows them to function.”
“It is at the moment hurting families, teachers, older people and all the different elements of society that keep our society going. It is hurting them horrendously. There has been a postponement. The Government stated that such a postponement could never happen but it has. We now need a proper discussion about carbon taxes. Other European countries have carbon floors and other issues to ensure they nudge people towards non-fossil fuels in the future. This tax is a hammer in relation to people's behaviour. Carbon tax is, we are told, planned to achieve a price to move people away from carbon use. However, if the market has already achieved that price, carbon tax is just punitive. Carbon tax is, we are told, intended to change behaviours but people have no alternatives. They cannot take in the silage with an electric car.”
“They make it more difficult to trade internationally. They put pressure on jobs. They make the food on the shelves more expensive to pay for. They are the biggest addition to the rip-off Ireland in which so many people are living. In the high energy cost country we are living in at the moment is the issue of carbon tax. It is problematic because it increases tax two, three, four or five years ahead of time, irrespective of the economic situation that people, families and businesses are in. You can only tailor a tax on the basis of where the economy is at and where people's pockets are at. This particular tax ignores all of that and that is why it is so problematic. We were the only political party in Leinster House that voted against the introduction of the carbon tax in the first place.”
“The Government has created some omnishambles this week. It is incredible that within the space of a week, the Government has done both the country and itself enormous damage. In many years' time, when perspective returns to this, the Tánaiste will definitely rue the decisions the Government makes today. In future, the only advice I can give him is to always talk to people in relation to any of these difficulties. The problem stemmed from the inability of elected representatives to talk to people. One issue here that people are not discussing at all it is that high energy prices are bad for the economy. I do not think I have ever really heard any political party in this country make that statement baldly in the past number of years. They make the costs of production go up. They make their exports go up.”
“It has kept blackening the names of those protestors since. It is incredible that we have had the Minister, Deputy Patrick O'Donovan, threaten press freedom in this country, probably the first time since Eoin O'Duffy himself. The Government is giving out about the protestors closing down businesses. These are the businesses that the Government was closing down that were protesting as well. There is another issue here. The Government talks about people not being able to make hospital appointments. There are a million people on hospital waiting lists at the moment. There are a dozen children on scoliosis lists across the country at the moment who cannot get operations. Some of them have lost their lives because of the decisions the Government has made.”
“The Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Government is a government of chaos. It has done more damage to fuel prices in this country than the war in Iran. The intransigence of Micheál Martin and Simon Harris has actually brought this country to a standstill. Their stubbornness has seen petrol pumps run dry for the first time since the 1980s and I have never seen as much political stress on the streets since the right to water protests. The Government should not forget that its democratic authority comes from the citizens with whom it refused to converse last week. For too long, there has been an arrogance in the Government and it is pulling down the shutters between it and the people. The fact that it escalated the protest last week is unbelievable, with threats of physical force from gardaí and from the Army as well.”
“Given the billions of euro in waste and the wholesale incineration of taxpayers' money by the Government on the national children's hospital, does the Tánaiste not think that pre-legislative scrutiny would be a good idea for critical infrastructure in this country?”
“On the day that the national children's hospital was postponed for the 18th time, the Government voted against pre-legislative scrutiny of the new critical infrastructure Bill. Does the Tánaiste not recognise the jaw-dropping irony here?”
“Yesterday the health committee heard that the national children's hospital will not be open, possibly, until autumn 2027. The opening of the hospital has now been delayed 18 times. The hospital that the Tánaiste signed off on is record-breaking for all of the wrong reasons. When the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, was asked recently when the hospital will open, she said that the opening date was in the hands of BAM. This is a startling admission. The Minister admitted that she has no control over the delivery of the biggest infrastructure project in the country. Yesterday, at a meeting of the Oireachtas infrastructure committee, Government TDs voted against pre-legislative scrutiny of the new critical infrastructure Bill.”
“It is an insult. It is a disgusting response to a whole section of society. I am talking about people who do not get the fuel allowance. These are people who are too rich for the fuel allowance but too poor to survive this Government's tax policies.”
“Europe has suffered economically significantly over the last ten years and is changing direction but this Government is the slowest government to change direction on this. He said the Government cannot step in every time prices are rising. The Government is in the middle of the fuel crisis. It took €4.1 billion out of the pockets of people in 2024 in fuel. Carbon tax, which did not exist ten years ago, is now topping €1 billion. The Government’s response to people who have seen the price of home heating oil double in the last four weeks is to give a 2 cent reduction in the NORA levy. That is astounding. It has gone from €1,000 up to €1,750 and the Government’s response is to drop it by €20. In four weeks, it will introduce another carbon tax hike, which will wipe out that 2 cent. The Minister of State must realise that is an abomination.”
“The ghosts of the Green Party are still determining the taxation policy on fuel. I suggest that if the Government wants to get people out of private transport, it should use a carrot rather than a stick. It should provide the public transport that hundreds of thousands of people are crying out for. It should help them to retrofit and get the solar panels on their roofs. People want to get out of fossil fuels - they are dying to do so - but they cannot because of the cost barrier. I listened to Deputy Ó Cearúil on this matter. Most of the world has realised that you cannot keep taxing energy. Europe even realises that it has become flabby and competitive in the last 20 or 30 years vis-à-vis the rest of the world because it is putting so much taxation on energy at the moment.”
“This is the difference between individuals being able to get to work, or not; businesses being able to function, or not; and farmers being able to produce food, or not. The Government is levying it at a rate where people cannot afford to pay it. I do not think the Government understands that. That is the key problem with its approach to this. We have had an understanding on taxation for many years that we do not over-tax the staples of life, such as children’s footwear and food. Now the Government is going down the road of purposely over-taxing these staples. One of the reasons it is doing so is because it is still imbued with the Green Party agenda of using a stick to get people out of private transport. It is as if the Greens have never left the Government at all.”
“The Government has been robbing the people of this country in terms of fuel prices for many years and is looking to increase the price of fuel year-on-year. The Taoiseach accused Aontú of being populist earlier because we are calling for a cut in carbon taxes. He does not get it. The Government just does not understand this. You cannot levy a tax on people for a product they cannot afford. There is a social contract when it comes to taxation. That is why we have progressive taxes. People pay taxes based on what they are able to pay but the Government is levying it on a staple - a product they cannot live without - at a rate they cannot pay. It is levying it as if it is a luxury good and its purchase is a form of conspicuous purchasing. It is not.”
“Those individuals - the people who get up early in the morning and make this country work - are the ones who are now struggling. Two-income families are struggling to be able to make ends meet because of the policies of the Government. Let us be honest about what is happening here. There is a view that the Government is a bystander when it comes to the fuel crisis in this country. This Government is the primary engine of inflation in fuel and its cost in this country at the moment. For sure there is a war, but there was a fuel crisis before the war even started. There were 320,000 people in energy arrears before the war even started. The Government was taking 60% to 65% of the cost of petrol and diesel out of people’s pockets before the war even started.”
“I do not think the Minister of State really understands how hard people are hurting at the moment or how disgusted citizens of this country are about the damage being done to their lives by the tax policies of this Government with regard to fuel. I do not think the Government has an iota of understanding. This is one of the most disconnected governments from the real existence of so many people I have seen. There is a chasm between the Minister of State’s experience and that of teachers, nurses, doctors and gardaí working in this country. So many people are forced to work in Dublin, for a start. They cannot afford to live in Dublin because they cannot afford a house there. They are forced to live 40, 50 or 60 km away. Because of that, they are forced to pay massive prices for fuel to commute back and forth on a daily basis.”
“That is an incredible situation. It does not need the carbon taxes at the moment to retrofit. It squirrelled away €10 billion in windfall taxes last year. The Government could use some of that money to invest in retrofitting homes to bring down the cost of deep retrofitting from €40,000 to a lower amount so that people could actually afford it.”
“First, working families do not get the fuel allowance. The working families that I am talking about who are in energy crisis at the moment are suffering significantly from this. Second, the war in Iran is a shocking situation, which has had an enormous effect on the price of fuel but Government taxes have a larger effect on the price of fuel. The majority of the price of diesel, 65%, comes from taxes at the moment. The Taoiseach spoke about the Government’s €250 million package. He should look at it like this. The Government has actually taken in about €140 million in extra taxes because of VAT going up on the higher prices in the past four weeks. Carbon taxes will take in an extra €160 million over the rest of the year. When the two are put together, the Government’s package is smaller than the extra taxes it will take this year.”
“For sure, the war in Iran has accelerated hardship on families but the Government was taking 65% in tax on a litre of petrol and diesel before the war. Some 320,000 families were in energy arrears before the war. The price of electricity in this country was at the highest in Europe before the war. The painful reality is the Government is tax gouging families. The question I have for the Taoiseach is: will the Government cut carbon tax on home heating oil?”
“It is an absolute disgrace but it is not the full picture either here because in a few weeks, the Government plans to raise the price of a litre of home heating oil by 2 cent. In the teeth of this hardship on families, the net results of its tax actions in a month will be to marginally increase the tax on home heating oil in this country. Families are crushed by this energy crisis. Small businesses are going to the wall. Carers cannot afford to drive to mind the people they care for. Workers cannot fill their tanks to get to work. Farmers are actually seeing their costs spike while the price of their produce is falling, and the Government’s policy is to increase the net tax on home heating oil. The heart of the problem here is that the Government’s plan is to increase taxes on fuel.”
“She is not alone. At the moment about 2 million people across the country are dependent on home heating oil. In the likes of counties Donegal, Sligo and Leitrim, there is no connection at all to the national gas grid and as a result, many of these homes are locked into that fuel source. What did the Government do for these families? It took 2 cent off a litre of home heating oil. In the jaws of an energy crisis when home heating oil has increased to record levels, the Government’s amazing solution to this has been to drop the price of a litre of home heating oil by 2 cent. A fill has gone from €1,750 to €1,730. It is an atrocious insult to hard-working families in this country.”
“The price of home heating oil has shot up by 85% in recent weeks. Last month, the price of 1,000 litres of home heating oil was about €950. This week is retailing for €1,750. This country saw the biggest increase in home heating oil in the whole of the EU. Very few families have the colour of €1,750 lying around the house. Hard-working families, nurses, teachers, gardaí and small business owners simply do not have that money available at any one time. One nurse contacted my office and said she has not been able to refuel her home because of the price of it and her family is simply going to bed early to keep warm at night-time. She said that the family do not smoke or drink. They do not go out and do not get takeaways. She said she is embarrassed because she cannot afford the basic necessities for her children at the moment.”
“With the spike in costs, especially fuel costs, gardaí are unable to pay to fill a tank with fuel. I am calling for the Minister to invest significantly in pay, terms and conditions to make sure we have the gardaí necessary to police the roads and streets in towns and villages throughout this country.”
“If we look at what is happening to the Garda, it is incredible. Resignations over the past number of years have never been as high. Gardaí are voting with their feet, and they are leaving. Gardaí are being attacked on a daily basis. A parliamentary question reply that I received shows a significant number with at least one garda being physically attacked on a daily basis in this country. Garda have been on sick leave. A total of 35 gardaí were on sick leave last year due to poor mental health and ill health - 300 in total over the past six years. Garda numbers are still falling. Incredibly, in 2024, Australia recruited more gardaí net than this State. If the Government is not willing to give the proper pay, terms and conditions to gardaí working in this State, they are not going to be able to remain in office.”
“Today, a Garda representative body claimed that gardaí are neither trained sufficiently to pursue scramblers nor do they have the legal protections to do so. Ireland has witnessed a significant increase in horrendous road deaths. All of us have been stopped in our tracks over the past few months witnessing this but there is a direct correlation between the number of gardaí policing our roads and road deaths. If the Minister is going to allow for the number to fall into the future, we will have more road deaths. Unfortunately, people's behaviours turn for the worst when they know that they are not going to be stopped or checked on the road for bad driving behaviour. It is true for crime as well. We have seen a massive spike in the number of violent and serious crimes in many parts of the country in recent times.”
“The fall in the number of gardaí in this country is one of the worst legacies of the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Independent Government. It has enormous effects throughout society. I will focus on one of the effects, which relates to road traffic accidents. Mia Lily Keogh O'Keeffe was a young 16-year-old girl going about her daily life on a Saturday in Navan in February. She was killed at a pedestrian crossing while walking her dog. When Mia Lily was born in 2009, there were 1,046 gardaí assigned to traffic policing in this State. In the year she was killed, there were 618 gardaí assigned to road traffic policing. In January, another 16-year-old girl, Grace Lynch, was killed when she was struck by a scrambler in Finglas. The Government had the power to ban scramblers since 2023, but it did not until after the death of Grace Lynch.”
“How is it that people with good-paying jobs are still struggling? It's not right, it's not just. I'm heartbroken that our children are missing out so much because we don't have the finances. This government should be absolutely ashamed of itself.”
“I don't get a fuel allowance to help us get to work and back like politicians do. I pay €10 parking fees on top of soaring prices and I know other staff who are paying €15 parking fees every single day. I work it out that I can only go on two more months at this rate. I've already had to cut back on our shopping bill. We literally buy only essentials as it is. I don't smoke, drink or have any social life. A garda responded: I'm a mother of five. I'm a member of the Garda Síochána, as is my husband. We are struggling beyond comprehension. We pinch and scrape but we still seem to not have enough. We live week to week and one unexpected bill will put us under. I don't drink, smoke, go out, have takeaways, have luxuries. We have older cars. I can't remember the last time I bought something for myself. The toll it's taking on us is serious.”
“I want to just inject the voices of ordinary citizens into this debate, if I may. These are the voices of a nurse and a garda that were posted on social media today. The first one said: I am a nurse working in a Dublin hospital but I live in the midlands. I travel 100 km to work and 100 km home every day. We live in the midlands because we can't afford to live in Dublin but we really can't afford to live here either. We're barely surviving. Our main source of heat is oil. We ran out two weeks ago, we can't afford the bill and we can't heat our house. Very few people have that kind of money. We have two kids and it's early nights for all of us now. The only luxury we have is an electric blanket on our bed to keep us warm. The cost of living has gone out of control.”
“That is an incredible legacy left by this Government. In some years, the majority of graduating doctors are also leaving this country. Thankfully, cancer survival rates are increasing but that is because of better medicines, improved technology and improved treatments. It is certainly not because of the actions of this Government.”
“Aontú also discovered that there is a 12% differential in outcomes for breast cancer depending on whether someone is diagnosed in a public or private hospital. Someone diagnosed in a cancer centre has an 85% chance of surviving, while someone diagnosed in another public hospital has an 81% chance of surviving. However, someone diagnosed in a private hospital has a 93% chance of surviving. A patient diagnosed in Sweden is 7% more likely to survive, while a patient diagnosed in Britain is 5% more likely to survive. Other countries are doing far better and more people are being protected. Why is this? It is because the money in this country is not getting to the front line. Many staff are going abroad. A reply to another Aontú parliamentary question has shown that 13,000 nursing staff left Ireland in the past five years.”
“Cancer services in the north west are being shut down. Cancer centres in Galway, Waterford and Limerick do not have the necessary PET scans, antique radiotherapy equipment is breaking down and people are dying for the lack of timely treatment. The Irish Cancer Society has said that the Government has met only one of its six targets set for cancer treatment and tests. A reply to a parliamentary question from Aontú has shown that breast cancer survival rates can differ by 14% from one county to another. The Minister of State will be glad to know the breast cancer survival rates are as high as 94% in Cavan, but they are as low as 80% in the likes of Kerry. Last summer, BreastCheck, a countrywide screening service for women between 50 and 69, missed the target for 195,000 screenings by 30%, an incredible figure.”
“Patients in major cities, particularly those travelling from the north west, face delays of up to eight weeks for chemotherapy despite the national cancer strategy stating that a person should not wait for more than 15 days. People with breast cancer and prostate cancer are being denied timely, life-saving chemotherapy and radiotherapy. I met a doctor in Letterkenny who told me that just 12% of cancer patients in that hospital received treatment within the recommended 15-day working timeframe. In Galway, patients are waiting seven to eight weeks for treatment. The National Cancer Control Programme has written to Aontú stating that the HSE is failing to meet its own radiation treatment targets. In the year to August 2024, treatment targets were met only once in Galway and only twice in Cork.”
“Like many other Deputies in this Chamber, I am a cancer survivor. I am blessed to be six years cancer-free. When you have cancer, it is like an enormous cloud descends upon you and your family. The more important message to go out tonight is that if you get treatment fast, the sun will shine again and that cloud will lift from your family. Getting treatment is the key issue and the problem is the fact that where someone lives in Ireland determines whether he or she gets treatment in a timely fashion. There is a postcode lottery in this country when it comes to cancer treatment and, therefore, cancer outcomes. The Irish Cancer Society has released damning information that shows massive variations in cancer diagnostics and treatments in this country.”
“Behind all the mealy-mouthed words from Government today, the painful reality for people in this country is that the Government is going to keep tax-gouging families. Our parliamentary questions have shown that the Government took €4.1 billion in fuel taxes in 2024. Carbon taxes are at a record level, topping out at €1 billion. Even today, the Government's plans are to raise carbon tax on 1 May. That is a savagely damaging policy against the people of Ireland. In this crisis, the Government has already collected €120 million in extra taxes in the last four weeks. It is quids in with the crisis so far, and its increase on carbon taxes for the rest of the year will bring in €160 million. Those two together are more than €135 million that it is spending on this. We are asking the Government to reduce carbon taxes now and let people live.”
“Families are being crushed by this energy crisis. Small businesses are going to the wall. Carers cannot drive to mind the older people they are looking after. Workers cannot fill their car tanks, even just to get to work, and farmers' costs are spiking at a time when their produce prices are falling. At the heart of this crisis are Government taxes, and no other political party is calling this out. For sure, the war in Iran has significantly accelerated the hardship, but the Government was already taking 60% to 65% out of petrol and diesel before the war. There were 320,000 people in energy arrears in this country before the war, and Irish electricity prices were the highest in Europe.”
“So many families have now waited 50 years since the killing of their loved ones while the immediate family - their mothers and fathers or even their brothers and sisters - have passed away, with the fight for justice in the hands of grandsons, granddaughters, nephews and nieces. This Government has an opportunity to draw a line under that and make sure there is access to justice. I urge the Government to take that opportunity.”
“It should be determined by the Judiciary and the Judiciary alone. There are many ways we can allow for evidence to be taken and heard abroad and documents that have already been used by the Police Ombudsman in the North of Ireland or many of the different investigative tools in the North of Ireland to be used in an investigation into the South in order that we can bring forward truth and justice to the families that need them. It is beyond time the Government started to institute that process in this jurisdiction. The Government has gone some way in doing that in this Bill to allow for information to be collected here for an inquiry in the North of Ireland, but the opposite can be done as well to make sure we get to the truth. That truth is needed.”