Fuel Protests: Statements (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-14 ============================================================ Joe Flaherty (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach Obviously, it has been a hugely difficult weekend for us all but I want to say at the outset how proud I was of the farmers. In the history of farmers, we are unique. Indeed, the National Farmers Union, NFU, predates both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in terms of political parties. Only Sinn Féin predates the NFU. We have seen down through the years how strong a force the farmers are. They are willing to go to jail and have gone to jail in the past. They are a powerful force and a force for good. On a personal level, I am sorry and I apologise to them wholeheartedly that they had to do what they felt they had to do. As a Government, we did not react conclusively or effectively in real time to the situation. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the dial on this issue went back as far as the budget we brought in last year. It was compounded then when we brought out half-hearted measures a number of weeks ago, when we reduced the cost of green diesel by 3 cent. Virtually every rural TD contacted the Government and said that this was absolutely crazy and would inflame farmers, and it did exactly that. There was no reason to do that. We should have held back on it and introduced the all-encompassing suite of measures that we introduced this week which addressed the issues facing hauliers and farmers. We could have been a lot more successful and we could have taken a lot of the heat out of the market. I must say, and I have said it several times to my party leader, whether he likes it or not, that we delivered a flawed budget in 2026. It was a budget that very simply forgot the people of middle Ireland. It forgot the people who, as my former boss Eugene McGee once said, get up early and eat their dinner in the middle of the day. They are the people who are the benchmark of this country. Our mandarins overlooked the suffering of the people who are most marginalised in this country because they are immune to it and they do not hear about it in Dublin 4. They ignored the suffering and isolation of the elderly because they thought it was a myth. Ultimately, we cobbled together a budget for 2026 that failed our most vulnerable. I say that as a Government representative and I apologise for that budget. Having single-handedly championed the cost of living in the previous Government, Fianna Fáil as a party shamelessly forgot the pain and suffering in the delivery of that budget. I spoke at length with An Taoiseach yesterday on this issue and I have left him under no illusion as to where my future loyalties will lie in the absence of a cast-iron and soon-to-be-announced commitment to a raft of cost-of-living supports and indeed, if needs be, a mini-budget. We need to be contrite at this point in our history and we need to show empathy. In many ways, we need to be able to show that we can move forward again as a society and as a country, as we did in 1930 and again in 1950. I have no doubt that we will do it again, shoulder to shoulder with farmers. Unfortunately, the reality is that in the last year to 16 months, we forgot the real people of this country, the people who were making the sacrifices. We forgot about the people like the woman my colleague mentioned who is bringing her child with special needs to appointments. We forgot the elderly woman who lives alone. Her husband died two years ago and she is yearning for a call to the door. The same woman wonders now how she is going to pay for her heating. We forgot those people. I have told the Taoiseach in the past 24 hours that we need a suite of cost-of-living supports. We need to double down on the tokenism and glib measures announced a few weeks ago. They did not go far enough. They might have sounded nice or looked well in graphics on social media but they did nothing. They did not address the real problems that we are facing in rural Ireland. Without delay, as I told the Taoiseach yesterday and as I am sure the Opposition will agree, we need three energy credits. We also need a cast-iron guarantee from the energy providers that they are not going to increase their prices for the next two years. We need double social welfare payments for the disabled, for the elderly, for lone parents and for those in receipt of the working family payment. We need a double children's allowance payment, allowing families a discretionary spend, whether that is on a meal out or help towards a holiday. I ask the Cathaoirleach to give me some leeway with the time because it is very rare for me to go against my own party. It is very important that I am given the opportunity to say this. As I have said to the Taoiseach, this is a red line for me and it will also be a red line, I hope, for many of my colleagues. We are at a turning point here in Ireland. We need to recognise, foremost, the people of middle Ireland, the people who go to work on a daily basis and who have never gotten anything in the lifetime of this so-called recovery, the people who struggle to make ends meet. I have asked the Taoiseach to consider a one-off €1,700 tax refund for every worker earning up to €40,000, reducing to €1,000 for those earning up to €70,000. In the case of a couple, it would be €3,400 or €2,000. It would be a much-needed dividend for those people. It might help them with some bills or help them to go on a holiday that they have not had in the last number of years. It is something that we need to do. Everybody in this room agrees that we crossed the Rubicon at the weekend. The people of Ireland stood up and told us we were wrong, and we have to be man and woman enough, whether we are in government or in opposition, to stand up and say, "We have done you wrong and done you a disservice." I am doing that here. We lost the people we claim to serve and to defend, and that was reprehensible on our part as public representatives. I hope that in the fullness of time my party leader, Micheál Martin, will have the forthrightness and the self-belief - I am sure he will - to come forward and apologise for the past seven days. I want it to be known that my apology is heartfelt and earnest. My party and my Government forgot the very best that Ireland has to offer. They forgot the people who get up and do the work. We need to seek their forgiveness and to show some remorse, and I do so here very humbly. Thank you for giving me the extra time, Chair. --- 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