Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Perfect. There are, of course, challenges as we emerge from that situation of peak Covid. One of these is the cost of living. The cost of living has spiralled out of control for many families. Many families are put very much to the pin of their collar. I welcome what the Minister has done overnight and into this morning in looking at ways to alleviate the burden of costs on people with regard to their fuel bills. More needs to be done because what I have seen and what has been spoken about in all forms of media, including social media and mainstream media, is overnight price hikes. We saw some forecourts upping the price of petrol and diesel by 15 cent. That could be in the realm of price gouging. There is a taxation regime in place and there is excise duty and the Minister is taking measures to deal with that.

It is unforgivable that petrol stations would try to get ahead of Government by increasing prices before policy gets there.

I wish to speak about construction costs. The Government has a very comprehensive policy to deal with the housing crisis and there are many elements to that. Key to everything is building houses, be they social housing, affordable housing or private housing. At the moment it is nigh on impossible for someone who has planning permission and who wants to develop a home to get a contractor to tender and carry out the work. The Government and indeed all of Europe have not yet fully grasped the supply chain issue there.

Prior to and in the early months of the Covid pandemic, the Government, in step with our European partners, was able to work across international boundaries to develop a very fluid supply chain of personal protective equipment, PPE, and then, latterly, vaccines. The next supply chain that needs to be corrected is building materials. At the moment workers have been forced to walk off some construction sites because the next pay cheque is not coming in; the materials are not there. Government needs to grasp this issue.

This legislation deals with Covid supports. Overnight, I was appalled to receive an email from someone in my constituency who has spent the past two years proffering a theory that Covid does not exist, that RTÉ is fake news and that none of this ever really happened. I was appalled to see that now the rhetoric has moved to fake news on Ukraine. That is where that whole ideology has now shifted to. Shame on those promoting that ideology because Covid has been very real and has taken many lives. The nurses, the front-line staff and those who shored up the economy during this period need to be front and centre of our minds.

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