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

I welcome the few payments that people will get as small as they are. They will help some people but many will be left behind. I, along with many others, could understand the cost of electricity going up, if the cost of producing it was going up. We now find, however, that the electricity companies are doubling, tripling and quadrupling their profits. Where is the regulator? Where is the Minister who is in charge of the regulator? What are they doing? Why are they allowing this to happen? Yes, the Taoiseach has said he will fight like a big man for a windfall tax in Europe but the problem is here. We have no regulator and no Minister who is responsible for the regulator. People are being robbed day after day for electricity that they should be paying far less for.

I am glad for all the people throughout the country who were able to cut turf for themselves because those people who have turf have surety that they will not be cold this winter. There is nothing more homely than to sit around a blazing turf fire. I thank the Minister, Deputy Ryan, for creating awareness when he said that people could not cut turf because that is when they got out to cut it in the fine weather and saved it. We are glad that happened.

We are leaving 10,000 acres of bog behind us in Littleton. We have grand bogs in Barna, Foilbee, Reaboy, Rea na Colli and other locations. All these places could be utilised way more. Shannonbridge was closed down and every day since then the cost of electricity has gone up day after day. The Government will not allow us to open Shannon LNG or Barryroe. The Corrib gas field could be explored more deeply and the Kinsale gas field could be used as storage. We need to reverse the decision of the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, when he was Taoiseach, to cancel drilling services in 2019.

The Taoiseach says every day that anyone in financial trouble should go to his or her community welfare office. I know of a man who is 80 years of age who is having financial trouble in accessing treatment.

He went to the community welfare officer to get financial help. He was in the office for an hour and a half. There was a group of refugees in front of him. When he proceeded to go up to the man at the counter - there was only one person there - he was told to go back to the queue and that all of the other 23 or 24 people were in front of him. If the Taoiseach is good enough to suggest that people should go to the community welfare officer, will he put more people on the counters to deal with and see after our own people, as well as the refugees?

Deputy Griffin created a hullabaloo here today about refugees being displaced from Killarney because other refugees came into the place they were in. I remind Deputy Griffin, who will be watching this debate from somewhere, that he is part of the Government that brought the 193 men into Killarney to upscuttle the refugees who were already there. Not only does he vote for everything the Government does, but he rounds up all of the backbenchers to vote for every notion Deputy Eamon Ryan and the Green Party think up.

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