The events of the last week have betrayed this Government's inability to grasp the level of desperation and frustration that is out there among people who feel they cannot keep their heads above water. The impetus behind these protests and blockades had been fermenting long before last week and long before Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal war on Iran, which is just the latest thing to give rise to a fuel shock and price shock. This is an issue that has been brewing for years. These protests last week became something far bigger than just a protest by farming and haulage sectors; they are about the level of desperation felt by workers and households who have for years been put to the pin of their collar by a spiralling and seemingly perpetual cost-of-living crisis that includes energy bills, rent, house prices, grocery prices, childcare costs, education costs and the cost of disability. I could go on. The frustration being aired on O’Connell Street, on the M50, in Whitegate and in Rosslare – that cry for help – had been coming from households and small businesses long before the escalation last week. The Government was warned about this. While the Labour Party might disagree with others in the Opposition on the details, we have consistently and as a united bloc said the Government is not doing enough to support working people and vulnerable people who feel they are on the brink. Time and again, this Government has shown whose side it is on. It has consistently put corporate interests and big businesses above the urgent needs of ordinary hard-working people. Workers and households up and down the country feel abandoned by this Government. It should have responded far sooner to the protests and blockades last week. What we saw was a Government flailing. It was a Government with no principles or values guiding its actions. It was a Government without a clue what to do. It had a leadership in the Taoiseach and Tánaiste that only spoke down to protesters without hearing or understanding the genuine grievances at the heart of the protests. It had a justice Minister playing the big man and threatening to deploy the Defence Forces, which served only to inflame tensions even further. This is not how to listen to genuinely held pleas for help. This is not how to manage a crisis. Last week we saw critical infrastructure blocked and serious disruption caused to working people and families in Dublin and across the country. We value protest and we must protect it, and protests by their very nature must be disruptive, but it was the Government that allowed the blockades at critical infrastructure sites to develop and to fester through its inaction, its inflammatory rhetoric and its failure to get around the negotiating table with the representative bodies. Working people, small businesses, small farmers and so on are at the sharp end of the cost-of-living crisis and very much have just cause to protest. I think we all - or certainly those on this side of the House - felt a considerable degree of support for the protests among the general population. I have received countless emails from constituents in Dublin South-West expressing their solidarity with those protesting and I found it telling that very few people contacted me who were annoyed at the protests despite the disruption. Despite some very questionable people leading the protests, fair-minded people can see there is a serious issue at the heart of these protests and blockades. Again, such is the desperation of so many people and such is the perpetual struggle with the cost of living that many workers and families joined the protests and there was a hope among many that the protests, as imperfect as they were, would lead to better outcomes for everyone. However, those regular PAYE workers have been left high and dry once again by this Government. As my colleague, Deputy Nash, has said, the package of measures announced on Sunday has been designed to placate narrow sectoral interests and has abandoned PAYE workers in the process even though they are the ones who will end up footing the bill for it. There is little or nothing in this package for the low- and middle-income workers under increasing pressure from rising energy bills, skyrocketing grocery prices and escalating housing costs. The Labour Party has advocated for time-limited supports to keep exposed sectors running, such as the small farmers and hauliers who play a vital part in our economy and are feeling the pinch. This Government has some real explaining to do to the 320,000 households in long-term arrears on their electricity bills who were looking to this package in the hope some respite would be forthcoming. Let us put this into context. Figures released to me by the CRU have shown the level of debt held in arrears on energy bills is about €185 million. The package of supports for the farming and haulage sectors announced on Sunday is worth almost three times the cost of giving an amnesty to those who cannot afford to keep up with their energy bills and are choosing heating and eating. Again, there is no doubt supports were required for these struggling sectors that rely on fuels like diesel and petrol, and we supported the Government’s Financial Resolutions because something is better than nothing and we understand the pressures facing those industries and ordinary people. However, the Government has decided once again to sideline ordinary workers and households who are barely able to keep their heads above water. These are people who have been crying out for help for years. The message that has been sent by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Independents is they will only listen to your concerns if you close the country down, and that is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set. I also raise the carbon tax delay. There are any number of interventions the Government could have made to reduce the cost of fuel for hauliers, farmers and everyone else. It is deeply disappointing and depressing that it is this climate-positive measure the Government has chosen to jettison over any other option to alleviate the energy price crisis we are facing. The Government could have done subsidies, direct payments or additional excise cuts. I find it ironic that, on the week the Government has finally agreed to the long-held Healy-Rae and Sinn Féin policy of undermining the carbon tax, Sinn Féin chose to bring a motion of no confidence and Michael Healy-Rae chose to resign from Government. We need clarity from the Government on the impact this delay - if it is just a delay - is going to have on the funding of our vital climate measures the carbon tax pays for and is ring-fenced for. I refer to measures like retrofitting grants that are helping people to improve the energy efficiency of their homes and reduce their bills, measures like ACRES and other agri-environmental schemes that are helping farmers to decarbonise and therefore protect them against exposure to fossil fuel crises like the one they are experiencing at present and measures like the just transition fund and poverty supports. The carbon tax is a crucial funding source for the very measures that will help to move us away from our dependence on fossil fuels and protect us against future energy crises. Funding from the carbon tax has already been allocated to all of the measures in budget 2026-----

Sentiment score: -0.13

-----but was done so under the assumption that an increase would be happening next month.

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We need clarity from the Government now on whether this delay will amount to a cut in the budget for climate measures or whether the funding gap will be made up by general Exchequer funding. I am pleading with the Government to ensure this move on carbon tax does not adversely impact on our already meagre just transition funding. Anything less would be a final nail in the coffin of this Government's commitment to meaningful climate action. If the Government decides it is going to use general taxation to make up the shortfall to fund these climate measures, funding that has already been allocated by the now abandoned carbon tax increase, then it Government needs to be honest with every taxpayer in this country that it has given up on the polluter pays principle and everyone is now subsidising the continued use of polluting fossil fuels which have brought us to this point.

Sentiment score: 0.20