Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will begin by associating myself with the remarks of Senators Ruane and Flynn. In terms of certain videos broadcast online, people are to be condemned for their behaviour and condemned for ramming a Garda car and my thoughts go out to the gardaí who were in that car. At the same time, stigmatising a whole area and community as a consequence, and labelling the people of that community with the hashtags that have been seen on social media is equally outrageous. It shows a complete ignorance about the real lived existence of people in these communities.

I spoke about the following issue with our MEPs last night. Yesterday I received an email from the St. John Bosco Youth Centre in Drimnagh, Dublin 12 to inform me that its gas contract will go out of contract on 22 September with a resultant price increase from 2.6 cent per unit of gas up to 17 cent initially, then 22 cent and yesterday, the rate increased to 27 cent per unit of gas. The centre hoped to lock the provider into a contract at the latter rate so the centre's gas bill will increase from €700 to €4,500 a month. Let me put that in context by saying that drugs task forces have not had their core funding increases since 2013. That means they have cut back on the number of people who work and reach out into communities. If organisations are being faced with huge increases in their energy costs, the number of youth workers and community services will be cut back. If we view videos from any area then we must bear in mind the fact that there has been gross under-resourcing, which is a fact that I have raised with my own party and at Government level since February of this year.