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

I, too, want to support the amendment. It is so ridiculous to be seeking to impose the carbon tax with the cost of fuel as it is. The cost of fuel being as it is today is mainly due to the Government taking the most of it in tax already. A barrel of crude oil is cheaper today than it was four years ago.

I think of the prices poor people are paying at the pump. They are not paying it for fun. They are paying it to keep their cars going so they can go to work, bring their children to school and do the shopping. Not all of them are living in urban areas. In fact, apart from the towns and villages in Kerry, most of Kerry is very rural and far away from shops, schools and from anything. If you do not have a car, you are stranded and that is the gospel truth. You cannot get public transport and you cannot even get taxis at night nowadays, never mind during the day. Taxi people have to work in other areas because they are not making a sufficient income from their taxis. Most of them are only helping themselves to keep going with their taxi, which is barely paying the bills, and so that they can have a car. That is what many of them tell me. They are saying the taxi would not be justified at all, but that they have insurance, tax and the fact they have the car go to other work and for other things. They cannot stay out late at night to work because they are not generating enough income. There are not enough taxis to go around and there are no DARTs and there is no Luas. Indeed, there is no public transport, except going from one town to another. There is no public transport like that to help people to go to the rural areas, through the third class roads or the cul-de-sac roads.

There is the issue of the hauliers who are transporting the goods. Rural Ireland depends so much on them. To think that any Government or any Minister would seriously think of adding to the cost of fuel today, given what it costs already. Our Rural Independent Group was the only group in this House that voted solidly against the introduction of carbon tax. The carbon tax was to coax people away from using fossil fuels, such as diesel, petrol, etc. God almighty, can the Minister not see that people cannot manage without them? Take the cost of fuel; it has been and is still is almost €2 per litre. That is more than €9 per gallon. Take cars in rural areas where they are only in third gear; one cannot get an economical return for those cars. That is what they have and that is what they need.

It is not fair of the Government to insist on adding to their woes by insisting on carrying on with the carbon tax and adding it to the cost of the fuel. To clarify, we asked the Government last year to forgo the National Oil Reserves Agency, NORA, levy. All it is doing now is substituting it. It is doing that now, but it is still insisting on the carbon tax, which is totally unfair. I would expect that when Ministers get into power that they would be fair to the people and to the country they are representing. However, they have been totally unfair with what they are doing with the carbon tax, because fuel is excessively dear as it is. As I said, a barrel of crude oil is cheaper now than it was four years ago. That is a fact, and the Minster can look at the records.

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