Fuel Protests: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-14 ============================================================ Joanne Collins (SF), Agricultural Panel I am delighted we are having this debate. I raised the matter on the Order of Business. I reiterate that I stood in Foynes for the five days and five nights. I am very proud that I did because I stood with colleagues, friends and family. This did not start with the Iranian war. It has been bubbling for a long time. We have heard about it. We have heard about children not being able to get school places. We have heard about carers and special needs assistants marching the streets. Marching the bloody streets does not work because they are not getting anything. That is how these people felt. They felt that marching the streets was grand but asked what it was going to achieve. They have looked at everything that has happened over the past couple of years with the cost-of-living crisis, and nothing is working. There is a contractor who is a bus operator in County Limerick. Paudie Kenneally is an amazing person and a really good businessman. He announced on Sunday night that he is no longer running his bus operation. On Monday morning, there were kids who could not get to school. Children with special needs could not get to school on the bus. Their carers had to ring up and tell them there would be no bus tomorrow. What are they going to do? That is what this country has come to. Bus operators are stopping because they are on fixed contracts. The measures that have been announced and will be announced, which we have heard snippets of, will not cover everyone. The Government did the usual divide and conquer: let us give the hauliers a package and let us give the IFA a package. What happens to the contractors? What happens to the bus operators? What happens to every parent who has to get fuel to take their children to school because they do not have a bus? What happens to the more than 700,000 homes in this country that use home heating oil? God forbid that the Government would think of anything outside the M50. That is how it feels. I can guarantee that very few of those 700,000 are in Dublin. They are spread out. A lot of them are isolated. A lot of them are elderly people who are living in one room because they cannot afford to heat their entire house. Again, not a penny has been taken off home heating oil. I cannot understand what is going on here. I will tell the Minister of State one thing for sure. That crowd outside is not going to die down. Those people are not going to lie down. They are not going to take any more. I, for one, will be back out with them. I can feel the pain. I stood there for the five or six days, and I watched grown men cry. I am sorry. It is very rare that I see a grown man cry, and it is usually at the funeral of somebody they love. They cried for their businesses. They cried for the fact that they could not continue their businesses, and that they were letting their families down and letting their customers down. To have a country that is so wealthy but where people are so poor, I cannot fathom it. I just cannot understand it. It is hilarious to hear Fianna Fáil Senators giving out about a Fine Gael Minister. I am sorry, but are they not all on the same side? They all voted with one another on the other side of this House. To hear, all of a sudden, that Fianna Fáil does not agree with Fine Gael because its Minister is in charge of something, I find it quite hilarious. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-14/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-14