Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach will be meeting with European leaders in Versailles to discuss the impact, including the economic impacts, of the war in Ukraine.  Many people in Europe quietly want to use the war in Ukraine to boost up military spending and make our relationship to NATO a closer one and yet the Taoiseach uses excuses about Europe to say he can do nothing about rising fuel and energy costs because Europe would not allow it.  Europe is happy to co-ordinate on militarisation but not so happy to co-ordinate on protecting working people in Europe and in this country against the rising cost of fuel and energy which is going to immiserate them.  Should the Taoiseach not be going to Europe, as part of this European semester process, to say that we need radical emergency action and we want the licence to introduce controls on the price of energy and gas, and not just petrol and diesel?  What about gas, heating oil and all of the things that were immiserating people before the war in Ukraine and will do so to a greater extent as that war unfolds?

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