Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this issue. I congratulate Deputy Dooley on the imaginative legislation he has introduced to try to deal with escalating fuel prices. I do not expect queues to run from the forecourts down the streets of this country tomorrow evening as people wait to see whether this Bill will be accepted by Deputies when the bells toll in the Dáil. The Minister for Finance roundly rejected it this morning without giving the actual debate in this House a hearing. He decided to summarily reject a proposal that was to be made in this Chamber without waiting to listen to the debate on it. As a result, he is not in a position to benefit from the common sense approach of Deputy Dooley and others to the question of how and, more importantly, why we should deal with the escalation in fuel prices. I genuinely thought this proposal would get a bit of hearing. I sat on the Government benches on Wednesday, 4 June 2008 when the then Leader of the Opposition almost fell over as he spoke passionately, with tears of sadness in his eyes, about hard-pressed trawlermen, truck drivers and motorists.

See this speech in context