I take on board what the Government said about not having a knee-jerk reaction to fuel prices. We are in a very volatile situation and who knows which way it is going to go over the coming months? At the same time, there is some space for some sort of interim coverage. I would say it is going to be coming, to be quite honest. I would like more proactivity in terms of the timescale of what the Government is doing. Ultimately, as others have referred to, the companies have pushed the prices of petrol, diesel and kerosene up at a rate never seen before. I can only see it as price gouging. The companies will argue differently. We have to look at ways of clawing that back over a period of time. There is an argument in the medium term for the excise duties but I am initially thinking of electricity bills especially as well as home fuel costs. I reiterate once again that we have to be more proactive in terms of our energy self-sufficiency. This current shock may or may not have been predicted. We had a discussion during Leader’s Questions a month ago on what Ireland was doing in terms of the despotic Iranian regime/ There is no love lost in terms of wanting to see it gone. Equally, however, what the Trump Administration and Netanyahu have done is counterproductive, and it is impacting on all of us. This reinforces the argument that we have to double, treble or even quadruple our efforts on energy self-sufficiency and ramping up renewables, not only wind, but also wave, tidal, solar and producing green hydrogen. We have to treat it like a war-time situation. If this eases off, something else will come down the road.

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