The Minister of State, Deputy Dooley, was on the radio this morning and he was explaining why the Government has introduced this new package. He claimed, of course, that it has nothing to do with the protests or blockades; nobody believes that. Instead, he said it is because the measures that we introduced a number of weeks ago were wiped out by the international price of oil going up. How could he have known that this would happen? How could the Government have known? We warned the Government. We warned it in that debate that unless it introduced price controls, precisely that would happen. What will happen with the meagre 10 cent and nothing that has been given in terms of kerosene? What will happen to that? Quite likely, that will also be wiped out by an increase in the international price of oil. What is the alternative? The alternative is to have price controls to give people security and to stop profiteering and to let people know this is going to be the price. That is what we need to do. The Government has the power to do it. We have a Bill that we introduced two years ago to do it. People were on the streets over the past week demanding it. That has to be matched with universal measures like a €500 energy credit and measures to stop our reliance on fossil fuel immediately. We need to have free public transport. The force to do that is ordinary people. What the Parliament does, the streets can undo. That is what we have seen over the past week and that is what we need to see in the coming weeks to force meaningful action on costs of living to protect people.

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