The fuel allowance gave a good rebate and relief to people who receive it. I will always acknowledge something that will yield some relief for people who are under serious pressure, but what went on yesterday leaves a lot to be desired. I spoke to Councillor Declan Geraghty. He has lorries and is one of our councillors in Galway. He told me that while the reductions in excise are welcome to everyone on white diesel and petrol, there is a clear difference between the IRHA and the private operators. Fuel companies, quarry operators, hardware companies, manufacturing companies, retailers, etc., that operate trucks for their own collections and deliveries have been left to one side. That does not require a haulage licence. They do not qualify for the rebate scheme. It is totally unfair and will also lead to an increase in costs for the consumer and will have untold consequences for those companies as sole traders. The many companies that use green diesel in the manufacturing of products have also been forgotten, namely, steel manufacturing, quarries, concrete manufacturing, building, groundworks and civil engineering companies, who are large users of green diesel. This is not good enough going forward, especially for housing and commercial development within our nation. I have to call the Minister of State out on this one. The fishermen are very angry. He is Minister of State with responsibility for fisheries, so this is where he should have come in. They are calling me to tell me they have been forgotten also, on top of the farmers. I am not sure. There was a rebate with fuel for fisheries in Europe one time. I am not sure whether that is still available. The previous Government would not look at it because it was a green Government and they had this assumption in mind that you did not use fuel, which is a crazy assumption, but look. God help people who have that mindset. They are not living in the real world. We would all love to think that we could move into a different kind of world where we would not need fuel. We are nowhere near that in this country at this time. We do not even have wind energy offshore, something I raised with the Taoiseach in 2022 during Leaders' Questions. I spoke about the Barryroe oil field and the chance that it should be explored and looked at. It was kind of shrugged off and laughed off as a joke. I mentioned in 2022 that we could face serious problems. We have and we are because we have no energy independence. We are depending on every country in the world to look after ourselves. We could well look after ourselves without any other country. We are surrounded by water. That is where wind energy comes into play. We could have strong potential of an oil field off Barryroe. That was not researched, and when I spoke to the Taoiseach yesterday, he said von der Leyen told him not to do it. Von der Leyen is telling us how to run our country. We should be in collaboration with Europe by all means, but we certainly should not be dictated by Europe on how to get our fuel independence in this country. We should have explored the Barryroe field. We should have further explored the Kinsale field. We will throw all our resources out of this country and now we are totally dependent on fuel coming in from Scotland. God help us if anything goes wrong there, because that will close down the country within two weeks, maybe less. There are ways. We saw what happened with the home heating. A lot of people are very angry about that. We are talking about the fuel allowance, but still 1.5 million people do not get fuel allowance. They are the squeezed middle. They are the people who get up early in the morning and work in this country to put bread and butter on our table, on the tables of their neighbours and the tables of this country. They have been forgotten. Someone said yesterday that the package the Government put together is better than any package in the world. They are totally forgetting that the Government is robbing 65% taxes out of people's pockets every time they go to the filling station. The Government is taking the most tax in the world. It is easy to say it can give something a little extra back, but it has been forgotten that there may be a way to stop the charges from the toll bridge for a while. There are ways and means around facing the crisis we are in right now. Let us be honest: public transport, where it is being delivered, is fine. For a number of routes in my own constituency, and I presume throughout the country, people have been told there is no more money in the NTA's purses. Routes that they tendered for in Clonakilty, Dunmanway, Timoleague and Grange six months ago have been pulled out. Imagine. Now they are told there is no money. We will just pass away the time now and call the Government again. People in Kealkill have no transport. Not one iota of transport service is passing their doors in Drinagh and Caheragh. I could keep talking for here forever. It is all right to talk about public transport, but it is not there.

Sentiment score: 0.03