Mr. Eugene Drennan:

As regards being an interlocutor, we have presented five or six schemes to the Ministers for Transport and Finance, Deputies Eamon Ryan and Donohoe, that take into account the greening of our industry and the embrace of it. We want to bring it forward to be a modern industry that uses fuel efficiently, but we have not had an indication from the Government about what would be acceptable. As I was listening to one of the presentations that was made earlier, I took exception to the suggestion we do not embrace modern technology. We do but, as we have pointed out - this is where the State can act as an interlocutor – hydrogenated vegetable oil, HVO, and biofuel are not available to us in sufficient quantities to keep the fleet going. As for hydrogen and gas, the ships and the channel tunnel will not take us on board. We need diesel to supply Ireland, full stop. We can have clean diesel or additive diesel and we can do our best with it and modernise our fleet to a Euro 6 standard. There is no higher standard, no matter the mode, than Euro 6. We are keen to embrace it and anxious to get there.

In the context of Fit for 55 in Europe and all the green agendas, we seem to be trying to move faster than anyone else and to reach the deadlines more quickly than anyone else, yet we have the furthest distance to go and are the island off the island. It is too competitive an agenda in the context of the costs to us. We need the Government to be an interlocutor with Europe to highlight Fit for 55 is only aspirational. There is no law about it yet. Other countries are giving rebates and other incentives. Romania cut its price to €1.40 just before the crisis started. We are cognisant of the fact the State must keep the price of fuel in or around $300 a barrel. That is the law. How it is administered up or down can be determined by the State. We need to bring home the essential user to the supply chain or it will all stop. The crisis here, with the price increases so severe, is moving so fast that when we met the Minister for Transport on a Thursday some weeks ago, by the time we were meeting the Minister for Finance on the Monday, the whole agenda had changed, given how much and how fast the price had increased over the weekend. It is now at such a crisis point that we must move fast. There was a stoppage in the co-operative in Nenagh today - I will not name it on the record - and the milkmen did not go out to collect the second round of milk. It was a stand-off, and that is spreading to other co-operatives. We need the Government to be an interlocutor in Europe for us.

There are three parts to this, one of which is our industry, which will take some of the strain. The second is our customers. There are public limited companies, PLCs, and co-operatives with very fat balance sheets that have not addressed the costs and have not come to the hauliers. Third, there is the State, which can help us following a spike or a spiral and dig us out to get over any of these issues. There is nothing to bring the customer to the table. Customers are up against a big wall; they are individuals and small companies. We heard the consumer affairs expert talk earlier about price gouging. If we cannot bring the customer to give us the increases, they are not addressing the facts. We need the State to indicate what is acceptable and give us the supports, as we have requested. We proposed five scenarios to the Minister for Transport and none of them was fully acceptable because they did not take out as much carbon. We took all the carbon we could-----