People in rural Ireland, such as in my own area of Wicklow-Wexford, need to use a car. They are particularly impacted by the rising cost of motoring. They are getting fleeced with fuel costs, rip-off insurance, which was just mentioned, parking charges and maintenance for service repairs including NCT, especially for those using rural back roads, which are in dire condition where I live. There are financing charges if they have a car loan, and then there is depreciation, with a car losing 15% to 35% of its value in the first year and 50% by year 3. Do not get me started on Wexford rural roads. According to NOAC intercounty comparisons, Wexford has the worst rural secondary roads in Ireland. That has been the case for 30 years. There is an estimated shortfall of €60 million in Government funding and cuts over the past 15 years. Now, the engineers are saying we need a massive €194 million to bring them up to what engineers would class as an acceptable standard. On the way up to the inauguration yesterday morning, I hit a semi-pothole, a sort of a broken, jagged verge that had been covered in the rain. After that, I narrowly missed a car while trying to avoid another deep pool which could have been the same. These types of things are impacting hugely on people who live in rural Wexford and south Wicklow in terms of maintenance costs because they need to have a car in these rural areas. All of these are added costs. They include damage to rims, shocks, bushing and inner tie rods. I have become an expert in all these things with the amount I have had to pay out in the last few years. It is the same for lots of people I know. The gradient of the roads, the way they taper down to the verges, is putting strain on the steering systems. We have all of these technical extra costs, which people do not have in many other counties that do not have these road conditions. The Government has to address this, as the county council has repeatedly requested. We in Sinn Féin in this motion call on the Government to stop the proposed toll increases, end the farcical penalty of having to pay motor tax in one single payment, deal with the insurance companies, reverse the carbon tax increase of October, and not to proceed with further increases, which are really fleecing people in rural Ireland.

Sentiment score: -0.20