It is so disappointing that when people are under such pressure that the Government does so little to try to help them out. People who are driving in rural areas - I represent a rural constituency - have little option but to drive wherever they need to go, whether it is to a hospital appointment, to work or to bring their children to school. Everything else in rural Ireland has been cut back and squeezed down. At a certain time of year, all of us will have people on to us about school bus transport. The children who would have got a bus to school when we were going to school cannot get the bus any more and their parents have to drive them to school. At the same time, people see the price of fuel going up all the time. They also see the price of insurance, which was mentioned by many contributors. I certainly know about it. I have a young family, several of whom are driving now. They started in the last three or four years and getting insurance costs them €1,700, €1,800 or €2,000 to insure a car. It is very debilitating for young people starting off in life to face such high costs for insurance. We were told a couple of years ago, when there was big pressure to bring down claims, that bringing them down would bring down insurance premiums. It did not happen. This is a reflection on a Government that is not up to the job that it needs to do in putting controls on these industries that profiteer off the backs of ordinary people. The other issue is the tolls. We all use the toll roads every day of the week. We have no option but to do so. This is a huge problem because you have to pay every time you go through a toll and it clocks up all the time. As bad as it is for those of us who drive a car, for those driving vans and trucks and delivering food and so on to shops, it is even worse. That is going to put more pressure on the cost of living because, at the end of the day, it is the consumer who will have to pay those costs. If the Government is serious about doing something about the cost of living, it needs to support this motion and act on these issues. Coming in here and telling us the Government is doing its best and that things are not as bad as we are trying to paint it is not going to work because ordinary people know what they have to pay. They see it every week when they put fuel in their car. They see it every year when they get their insurance premium. They see it every day when they go through the toll roads. They need help from the Government, not platitudes.

Sentiment score: -0.02