I move: That Dáil Éireann reaffirms its confidence in the Government. I welcome this debate and the opportunity to again discuss important issues facing our people. Each of us here has a mandate and a duty to show respect for others and conduct a debate that shows respect for the people by acknowledging the full range of concerns at this deeply challenging moment in history. We need to talk about the huge impact of rising oil prices, but also the wider context of protecting jobs, funding services, investing to get costs down and getting Ireland through a period of international turmoil. Wars and a pandemic have led to sustained pressure on costs faced by families and businesses for nearly five years. The Government has had to act on a wide range of fronts, including securing basic supplies. There are structural issues which have to be addressed. I will be happy to return to the Dáil to discuss our investment plans for permanently reducing the upward pressure on key costs, especially energy costs. I welcome an honest debate about getting electricity prices permanently down in international terms. The House will note a report published this morning which explicitly states that since 2022, Government measures have shielded consumers considerably. However, today I will focus on the immediate issue of recent major increases in costs arising from rising oil prices. The Opposition claims that nothing has been done to help people, that other countries are helping more and that the Government could easily sort out everything. This is manifestly untrue and directly ignores the fact that we are implementing significant action, that it goes beyond anything being done elsewhere and that the core concern pushing up oil prices is an international conflict, namely war in the Middle East between the US, Israel and Iran. From the first days of this latest conflict, we have been directly taking action to reduce the impact on Ireland and have held ongoing discussions with representatives of the full range of groups impacted. The first intervention we implemented last month helped by cutting duties, benefiting everyone, and directly helping families. It amounted to €250 million. The latest measures go further and are based on detailed discussions with different sectors about their specific needs and they are designed to very directly help protect jobs and keep costs down. At €500 million, it is a comprehensive package. It is not about helping special interest groups. We all depend on transport, food production, haulage, fisheries and other fuel-intensive industries. That is why we are implementing specific measures tailored to these critical areas. These reflect the ongoing open and constructive discussions and interaction we have had with representative bodies. I will not attempt to address all of the false claims by Opposition Deputies but I will reply to a clearly untrue statement by Deputy Carthy. He claimed the Irish Government is the biggest profiteer - his words - on oil prices and that budget coffers were being swelled. The Deputy is intelligent enough and has enough access to research to know this is flat out untrue. As the publicly available facts show, the Government is already spending dramatically more on measures to help people with fuel costs than it is receiving in extra taxes. Before today, the measures provided by Government was costing close to €28 million a week while the additional revenue has averaged €4 million. Our actions also amount to proportionately the largest assistance package of any European country. The closest any country comes is Spain, where the support package is over one quarter smaller. The packages in Germany and Poland are roughly 90% lower than the supports we are implementing. As for Northern Ireland, the actions taken by the Executive and the British Government combined are a fraction of what we are implementing. The basic, core claim that we are doing nothing and are falling behind other countries is simply untrue. One thing the Opposition never does is respect the fact that we have to fund social services and investments. We have to secure basic energy and food supplies and keep open trade and exports - exports which are responsible for 90% of what we produce in any one year. We have to protect our ability to overcome new shocks which may arise. The measures we are implementing involve a very significant amount of public resources and directly support those being hit by the shock of increasing world fuel prices. They go further than other governments and combine both general and targeted assistance. As I have said, I am happy to return to the House to discuss prices in general and action on affordability. A combination of immediate and long-term actions is required but any politician here who pretends there are no hard choices to be made is being dishonest, and they know it. What the people have a right to is sustainable supports, combined with sustained action, to tackle the structural drivers of rising costs. This has to be the focus. Today, it is of course important to address events of the past week. Our action and engagement on fuel prices was ongoing before the blockade and will continue well after the blockade. This is a country which ranks in the top ten in the world for freedom of speech, the right to protest and the right of democratic participation. Every week, the streets outside of Leinster House are filled with groups passionately advocating for their cause. People speak up looking for funding for local services, special education supports, childcare, disability services, pensions and many other political, environmental and social issues. These demonstrations often involve closing roads in co-ordination with An Garda Síochána. The general public and businesses accept the inconvenience as part of what comes with living in an active democracy. The blockade of critical infrastructure of last week went far beyond this. It was a destructive blockade which threatened to cause much deeper damage. Everybody has a right to protest but nobody has a right to appoint themselves as the voice of the people and to threaten the jobs and livelihoods of many thousands of families. Nobody has the right to prevent people from getting to cancer treatment, to be visited by their carer or to distribute vital supplies. The House needs to face up to the fact that these actions were very directly threatening the basic fuel supplies of the country. This went far beyond the drying up of fuel pumps which people saw throughout the country. We were informed in Government that our only refinery was in danger of being closed and export-dependent companies were about to start sending workers home. The ports and refinery blockade meant that at the very time when global supplies are scarce, oil intended for Ireland was about to be diverted elsewhere. I absolutely understand the pressures people feel and the need for measures to reduce the impact of rising oil prices. That said, no group has the right to say to the rest of the country that it will decide who gets fuel to go to work or who gets fuel in general or that it will block Irish firms from exporting the goods which pay workers' wages. No action by the Government was taken in haste. Time was given for people to make their point, but action was required and was taken. Gardaí acted with the utmost professionalism under often extreme pressure, and with the specialist support of the Army, lifted the blockades. I thank them again for their work. I also thank the officials and Ministers in various Departments who worked tirelessly to make sure that essential services, particularly health services, remained available in the face of extreme challenges. There is another deeply important point arising from recent weeks concerning the nature of political behaviour in our country. There are many extreme groups which claim to speak on behalf of the people without ever securing the support of the people. It is standard practice for people to shout in the streets and online that they are the real people of Ireland and that the Dáil and the Government are a non-representative elite who know nothing and care less about this country. Parliamentary democracy is something we should all affirm and defend. The great majority of people who have protested have done so reasonably and democratically. We all saw that this was not the case for some other elements. Everyone here should understand that you cannot share platforms with them, express your support for them, call them the voice of the people and then deny your responsibility for legitimising them. I condemn utterly the sinister targeting of gardaí and of oil lorry drivers. I have told the Garda Commissioner that we will fully support his efforts to find and prosecute those involved. I also condemn the direct and indirect threats to Deputies and Ministers. The online threats against homes and offices should be condemned by everyone here. We should all be concerned with the attempts to import extreme ideologies here, something we saw with the number of online social media accounts which originated in America, Britain and elsewhere and which were spreading inflammatory comments about the blockade. In reality, we are in a period of dramatically escalating angry rhetoric in politics. The escalating rhetoric of Opposition here too is unprecedented. The Government has a clear democratic mandate. We have an ambitious programme for investment and services to support people and protect our country.

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On this issue and on the fundamental challenge of getting our country through a period of deep and rapidly evolving international challenges, I can say that as Taoiseach and as a Government-----

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-----we are clear-sighted, resolute and determined to do what we need to do to protect and defend our social and economic progress.

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You did, yes.

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You went on your holidays.

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With all the money we are spending?

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No, I did not.

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