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

I am glad to get an opportunity to talk on this very serious matter before us this evening. While I welcome that Sinn Féin is bringing the motion forward, I do not exactly agree 100% that this will be targeted enough to help the people who are in trouble. What I cannot understand is that the Government is agreeing to these interest rate increases, and the Government is saying the reason for it is to curb inflation. At the same time we know that the people affected by this are on the road going to work every day and the cost at the petrol pumps has gone to more than €1.85 per litre of petrol or diesel - they are nearly all the same now. Why is some control not being put on that? No. The Government is insistent on putting it back on excise duty and increasing the carbon tax.

These same people the Government is affecting are also trying to pay the extra higher interest on their mortgages. I cannot understand that, nor when the Government allows the ECB to say it is fine because it is to curb inflation. This does not make sense to me when at the other end the very same people who are on the road in the dark in the mornings and going home in the dark in the evening are paying through the nose for the petrol and the diesel they are using. The Government is not making any sense or any logic to those poor people out there who are trying to deal with the increases.

I am asking the Government, and it had shareholdings in AIB and Bank of Ireland, why it does not intervene and intercede to ensure people get fair play. The Government has lost the run of themselves. I cannot understand and a lot more like me cannot understand that by increasing interest rates, the Government is going to curb inflation, while at the same time the Government us driving us mad with carbon tax and excise duty on top of the exorbitant cost of the base price of oil to start out with.

See this speech in context