Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Given the fuel taxes being considered at this time, the Government should be facing an amazing crisis because it has no understanding of the difficulties in which people find themselves in this country at the moment. The Government is quite smug about it and quite happy. The Green Party is wagging the tail and the Government is running along with it. The price of a barrel of fuel is at its lowest ever but price of fuel in Ireland is rocketing through the roof. People cannot afford to get into their cars. They cannot afford to take their children to school. They cannot afford to put food on the table. The Government did the people as well with its 9% to 13.5% VAT rate. The Government is shutting restaurants all over the country. It does not have a clue of what the reality is on the ground. People who depend on public transport cannot get it. In my own constituency - and I cannot dwell on that as it is right through the country as well - there are areas such as Ballinhassig, Goleen, Dunmanway and Drinagh that have no public transport - nothing. There is no public transport in most of those places. Ballinhassig has a Senator from west Cork who is roaring every day of the week and blaming private operators when it is the Government that should be delivering there. He is failing in his duty to deliver to the people of Ballinhassig but is of course pointing the finger at everybody else but his own Government. It is a crazy situation and there are politicians all over west Cork. A Fianna Fáil councillor was shouting and roaring and blaming me because the funding for roads is lower now than it ever was. The lowest allocation was this year. There was a big meeting in Government Buildings last week about the roads allocations for west Cork when it is the Government that is to blame. That meeting should have been held four years ago. We find ourselves in an astonishing situation.

7 o’clock

People are struggling. The Government does not seem to care. Everyone in the Dáil was looking forward to a carbon tax. Nobody wants to hear about it now. People are all heroes now.

The director mentioned by Deputy Shanahan is correct. Things are not happening in my constituency. People should not have to wait two years for retrofitting. The Green Party is in government. It should get out of Government. It is not fit to be in government in this country. It has turned its back on the people and they will turn their backs on it in the next month.

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