Hauliers, farmers and agricultural contractors are among those who only a few years ago would have been called essential workers. Coach operators, too, are essential for day-to-day life, especially in rural Ireland where public transportation options are sorely lacking. They pick up some of the slack begotten to us by the dearth of inward investment from successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments. They operate on incredibly slim margins. In the face of drastically increasing fuel prices, they are looking to the Minister of State and his Government to alleviate that burden so that they can produce food, transport it and other goods, and help ordinary people go about their day-to-day lives, get to work, school or college, or just go about their ordinary business. The Taoiseach and the Minister of State seem taken aback when Members of the Opposition continue to raise this with them. The Taoiseach thinks people are failing to realise that the crisis has arisen due to international events outside of his control. The frustration being felt by hauliers, farmers, farm contractors, coach operators and many more is not because they do not comprehend international circumstances; it is because they looked to the Government in response to a cost-of-living crisis on which it has utterly failed them. The price shocks that are felt by the sector have knock-on effects for all ordinary workers and families, even beyond the immediacy of the energy shocks it is feeling itself. The Minister of State is failing them too with his meagre, paltry, half-baked and half-arsed half-measures. What we need now is to see real political intervention that meets the scale of the challenge that we face and that requires an emergency budget immediately. People cannot wait until October. We need to see petrol and diesel made affordable. We need to see carbon tax wiped off home heating oil and green diesel, with not one single cent in increases in carbon tax. We need the energy credits, which the Government callously ripped from people, restored. We need targeted social welfare packages for carers, pensioners and people with disabilities. Struggling businesses and ordinary people and workers need this now and it is no less than what is deserved during a cost-of-living crisis. We need an emergency budget.

Sentiment score: -0.20