Fuel Prices: Motion
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-14
============================================================

Michael Collins (II), Cork South-West

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-----

---

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/dail/2026-04-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-14