I listened to Deputy Gogarty with interest, and he is right. There were, unfortunately, a lot of self-appointed leaders involved in protests. However, there were very decent people involved in the protests I attended. They tried their best to weed out those, I call them thugs, who try to get involved. They get involved in everything that is going on. They think they can save the world from their homes, but that is not usually the case. There is a lot of stuff we are going back over here today. In relation to home heating oil, there was no decrease in the home heating oil and people are suffering at present. Use of the word "heating" is becoming widespread in the context of the fact that there are 300,000 people who cannot pay their electricity bills. That is a major issue that has been constantly spoken about in here. Unfortunately, those who mentioned it were never listened to. It is a very serious issue. The Government should have moved on it. In relation to other issues, there are very small things like cancer clinics, although they are probably not small in some respects. A discussion took place on C103FM yesterday morning in relation to the success of the cancer clinic in west Cork, but the fuel crisis is hitting it hard. This is a voluntary service that takes cancer patients to and from parts of west Cork and other areas across the county into Cork city every day. Everything is organised to perfection, except for the costs. There needs to be a budget set aside for those people here too. I spoke to a plant hire person in the road building and building sector. They have all been exempted from this package that is being provided. They are all suffering. Someone who is in the plant hire business is out every day of the week with heavy machinery. That is something that needs to be looked at again. In relation to the fishing industry, we have two types of fishers. We have the inshore fishermen who are working most of the day. They have no choice but to use petrol. They have been speaking to me about how they have to use pump petrol. They do not get a rebate for pump petrol. They go up to the pump and fill the drums-----

Sentiment score: -0.07

They fill the drums and put it into the boat and go out for the day and then go back and do the same thing. It is a continuous situation. I also then have those who are out there in the bigger trawlers throughout the country. I have correspondence from one of them. It states: Hi Michael, No word from our leaders. We have serious trouble with diesel. We have burned 2,500 in 24 hours. Our son was out on his last trip for 14 days. It cost him €31,000. It is not possible to keep going at that. We need help now, immediately, not in a month. We have 33 people working, all need money every week. This is the crisis in which people find themselves. They are paying bills left, right and centre. There are reliefs for some of these but people are not sure how to get their hands on them or whether it will be another month or another six or eight weeks. Some of these people are in trouble right now and need those reliefs this very minute. The Minister of State could throw back at me the fact that I did not support the package, but the reason was because the Government has tailored the carbon tax and all the increases in the carbon tax into it. I will never support anything that will hurt the Irish people. The Government has a programme scheduled whereby we can kick the can down the road until October and then hit people with a double, triple or quadruple increase. That is not the way to go. It is not a sign of a caring Government. It is a greedy, grabbing Government that wants projects and that maybe wants specialised projects. We have to look at projects. Some of the projects that can wait have to be sidelined, such as, maybe, the greenways and double cycleways. I was with Noel Thomas in Galway recently. Everyone in every house I visited in the housing estate there was livid about these double cycleways as opposed to single cycleways. They asked where the money is coming from and how we are spending that type of money. It is wasted money as far as they were concerned.

Sentiment score: -0.13