Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is talking about the change in the numbers of diesel cars and emissions and so on, but we make no goodwill gesture whatsoever. The Construction Industry Federation, which I am sure the Minister meets regularly, has said that its members cannot get tradespersons. Workers must travel, even farther from Tipperary and other places, up to work in Dublin. They do not have public transport to suit them, or it is not available at times they need it. There is an impact. They could not afford to stay in Dublin, even if they could get a bed. The Government is really squeezing these people. Many of them have families at home and in those cases the family may have to have a second car. The van might be used for work and the family would need a second car to bring kids to school and to do all the other necessary shopping and living in the country when one does not have public transport or the access to services. We need to have some bit of imagination here and try to look at this. There should be no problem with enforcement or verifying how the miles are clocked up. We are not talking about leisure purposes, we are talking about travelling to and from work. If a person is working on a major project in a bigger city he or she could be travelling there for six months, a year or two years. They could easily get verification of their travel. It is not that they want to travel. Many of these people do not have the choice but to travel or they could lose their employment. Do we want that? We have problems enough getting people to fill positions now, but thankfully that is a good complaint. We must support the people who are the middle Ireland, as we referred to earlier. They are all the time being knocked and kicked back, and they get no incentives or supports.