Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I ask the Minister to do something meaningful. He said the Government was doing a lot for the cost of oil. I am asking the Government to abolish the carbon tax on agricultural diesel for farm contractors, forestry contractors and farmers. Otherwise, we will not have a harvest and we will not have silage. The Minister's colleague beside him, Deputy Heydon, knows about this intimately. I ask that this be done for a period of five years at least. This is a wartime situation, as the Minister referred to himself, but this was coming down the tracks anyway ever before that. I also ask the Government to ring-fence over 200 million litres of agricultural diesel for the harvesting of silage, corn and all the crops it is talking about planting. We also need it for ordinary farm work and forestry work that has to be carried out because we have a shortage of timber already. Are we going to have a shortage of everything? If this is not managed properly, there will be chaos. I am asking for a period of five years. Tell the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, to cop onto himself because this is a wartime situation. His little dreams and plans are not working. They are crippling farmers and contractors and we have to deal with this meaningfully.

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