Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am a bit bewildered because this is a good motion and I want to support it. However, on 22 October 2022, Sinn Féin refused to support our motion to cut out carbon tax and we cannot have it every way here. The people at home are bewildered, as Deputy Tóibín said, and they are blackguarded, perished, angry, demoralised and many other words I cannot use. We have the highest prices in Europe and we get promise after promise that the Government is going to introduce a windfall tax. The ESB is making record profits. There is talk of decoupling oil and gas from wind and clean energy and a lot of semantics has gone on. We were the last in Europe to allow that to happen.

It is obviously a plan by the Greens. I told Deputy Ó Cathasaigh last week that he is green on the outside and red on the inside. He said he was happy to described as that. The Greens are nothing short of communists then, out-and-out communists. They want to destroy our people and destroy our country. I think of men like Liam Lynch and Pádraig Pearse and others who fought for this country to serve our people, but the members of this Government are serving themselves. They will not even tackle the big moguls and the oil companies. They will not tackle the ESB just as they will not tackle the banks, which are causing havoc and ruin for people every day of the week. I tell the Minister of State the sooner the Government packs its bags, evacuates this building and leaves it to someone who is able to run it the better, because it is a driving a coach and four through ordinary families. They cannot heat, they cannot go to work and they cannot do anything else. They can barely eat. It is a stated policy of the Minister of State's Green Party - a communist policy again - to force out people of their vehicles by charging punitive taxes and rates. The Government came back here two weeks ago and put excise on diesel back up again by 23 cent a litre by October of this year. To hell or to Connacht with the Greens is what I say.

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