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

I am glad to get the opportunity to talk against the carbon tax. I am glad that Sinn Féin has at last seen the light, having voted for the carbon tax already. I am glad it has now seen the light and is against the carbon tax because it affects every man, woman and child in rural Ireland, including ordinary workers, people with cars going to work, commercial transport and lorries that are driven by grand honest people who cannot stay going. Farmers with tractors and other vehicles, school bus operators, taxis and hackneys are all being driven down through the ground with taxes.

We can call it carbon tax, VAT or excise duty, but it is all tax on fuel. We cannot go to work or anywhere else without a car. We have no public transport, unlike in Dublin where there is one bus after another going around the corner with no one in half of them. We have no buses, no DART, no Luas and no trains. The last train went through Kilgarvan in 1959, I think. That is what I was told. That was last train the people of Kilgarvan saw.

All the Government is intent on doing in sorting out people's problems today is to increase the carbon tax again in May. God almighty, do Ministers have any heart at all? Do they know what they are doing to people in rural Ireland? Do they know how they are suffering? They cannot fill their oil tanks or their car tanks. People do not know where to turn because they are being demonised and criticised. Farmers are being criticised daily for one thing and another. The cost of fertiliser has increased. There is no assistance from the Government.

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