Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad of the opportunity to talk on this important matter. I support the call for the increase in the fuel allowance and to allow others on social welfare to access the fuel allowance. As has already been mentioned, 15 months is too long for someone to wait if he or she cannot afford heating.

My real problem is with the Government and its policies that increase the cost of fuel, coal and briquettes and put them out of the reach of ordinary people who are on social welfare or the old age pension. Those people have to count every penny as they go. Briquettes were among the available forms of heating. Women, young and old people picked up a couple of bales of briquettes that were easy to handle and clean, and provided good heat.

We are being told by the Government that we will not have them any more in a couple of years. It is saying it will be four years before they are finished, but I think it will be a lot sooner than that. The Government is driving people to use electricity. It says electricity is the way to go and that we should have electric cars, but does the Government not realise that the cost of electricity has gone up? The Government is promoting electric cars, yet we are told it will cost €26,000 to put a kerbside charging point in a housing estate. Does the Government stand over that? Then the Government tells people they cannot cut turf. Where I come from, people went out into the countryside and they were proud to cut turf in the summer time and to dry it and bring it home. They were proud to cut timber and put it into a shed to dry before they used it. They were proud to sit in front of their fires, which kept them warm, going back decades and centuries. The Taoiseach is following the Green Party out the gap like a dog following a flock of sheep. He is doing everything it tells him. Last night we heard the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, boasting that we are going to lead the way. I remind him that we are a small country and if we were to turn out the lights and leave this wonderful country we are living in, it would only make 0.13 of 1% in the overall context of reducing carbon emissions. We are all under the one sky. Is this what the Government has done to rural Ireland?

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