Johnny Guirke (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleagues for bringing this motion before the House. People in my constituency of Meath West and right across the country are really struggling now with the cost of living. They believe they are getting very little help from the Government. The rising costs for families are evident every week, with the price of diesel up 46%, the price of petrol up 35%, the price of electricity up 22.5%, the price of gas up 28% and the price of home heating oil up a massive 126.6% in the past year. The price of solid fuels has increased over 20% in the past year.

All this means is that older people are staying in bed for most of the day, as it is the only way they can stay warm. Others are choosing between heat, food and paying the rent or the mortgage and families are going to work struggling to put petrol or diesel in the car. These are real people. The only thing staying the same is people's income. This Government needs to act now. Does the Government realise the seriousness of the situation? Does it care enough? There is huge financial pressure on those who can least afford it. I have never seen it as bad. That is why we, in Sinn Féin, are calling on this Government to remove excise duty from home heating oil, to cancel the carbon tax increase which will increase the cost of gas and home heating oil from next Sunday and to scrap plans to ban the sale of turf from September. Turf is the only form of heating that has not increased in price in the last 12 months. It is mainly the well-off who cause most emissions and who are best placed to do something about it, yet most Government policies seem to penalise the poor, like those on burning turf. The importation of briquettes and peat from mainland Europe should be of greater environmental concern than stopping one neighbour from selling turf to another in a cost of living crisis. In a lot of cases, we are talking about older people who are not able to rear the turf themselves and rely on their neighbours to cut it, rear it and sell it to them. What alternatives are there for these people? They do not have money to retrofit their homes. They need 100% grants and even then it will take years. While Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael might like to blame the proposed ban on the sale of turf on the Greens when in their own rural constituencies, the fact is that without the support of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the Greens cannot bring in this ban on the sale of turf. Rural Ireland is watching which way they will be voting on this.

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