Talking to citizens is not intimidation.

The Minister of State is digging a hole.

The Government has created some omnishambles this week. It is incredible that within the space of a week, the Government has done both the country and itself enormous damage. In many years' time, when perspective returns to this, the Tánaiste will definitely rue the decisions the Government makes today. In future, the only advice I can give him is to always talk to people in relation to any of these difficulties. The problem stemmed from the inability of elected representatives to talk to people. One issue here tha…

Critical infrastructure gaps in this country are probably the worst legacy of the Government over the last number of years. This country is really poorly served by infrastructure. The Government's friends in the IMF say that Ireland lags by 32% behind our peers in terms of infrastructure delivery. The biggest cost on society is the fact that this Government cannot deliver infrastructure. For ten years after the crash, the Government spending was second-last from the bottom in terms of infrastructure. Only Romania s…

Yesterday the health committee heard that the national children's hospital will not be open, possibly, until autumn 2027. The opening of the hospital has now been delayed 18 times. The hospital that the Tánaiste signed off on is record-breaking for all of the wrong reasons. When the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, was asked recently when the hospital will open, she said that the opening date was in the hands of BAM. This is a startling admission. The Minister admitted that she has no control over the delivery of…

Given the billions of euro in waste and the wholesale incineration of taxpayers' money by the Government on the national children's hospital, does the Tánaiste not think that pre-legislative scrutiny would be a good idea for critical infrastructure in this country?

There is no link between critical infrastructure and the national children's hospital problem.

The fall in the number of gardaí in this country is one of the worst legacies of the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Independent Government. It has enormous effects throughout society. I will focus on one of the effects, which relates to road traffic accidents. Mia Lily Keogh O'Keeffe was a young 16-year-old girl going about her daily life on a Saturday in Navan in February. She was killed at a pedestrian crossing while walking her dog. When Mia Lily was born in 2009, there were 1,046 gardaí assigned to traffic policing…

There are three Ministers in the Department of justice.

The price of home heating oil has shot up by 85% in recent weeks. Last month, the price of 1,000 litres of home heating oil was about €950. This week is retailing for €1,750. This country saw the biggest increase in home heating oil in the whole of the EU. Very few families have the colour of €1,750 lying around the house. Hard-working families, nurses, teachers, gardaí and small business owners simply do not have that money available at any one time. One nurse contacted my office and said she has not been able to …

When prices are surging it is not-----

First, working families do not get the fuel allowance. The working families that I am talking about who are in energy crisis at the moment are suffering significantly from this. Second, the war in Iran is a shocking situation, which has had an enormous effect on the price of fuel but Government taxes have a larger effect on the price of fuel. The majority of the price of diesel, 65%, comes from taxes at the moment. The Taoiseach spoke about the Government’s €250 million package. He should look at it like this. The …

It is €40 million a week.

No.

Fuel taxes are not progressive and hurt low-income families most.

Progressive taxes.

The Taoiseach knows that most working families are not in receipt of that.

I do not think the Minister of State really understands how hard people are hurting at the moment or how disgusted citizens of this country are about the damage being done to their lives by the tax policies of this Government with regard to fuel. I do not think the Government has an iota of understanding. This is one of the most disconnected governments from the real existence of so many people I have seen. There is a chasm between the Minister of State’s experience and that of teachers, nurses, doctors and gardaí …

The Omagh bomb was the deadliest atrocity of the Troubles in the North of Ireland. It was second only to the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, which killed more people in the seventies. On 15 August 1998 the Real IRA, a group opposed to the IRA ceasefire and to the Good Friday Agreement, killed 31 people, including two unborn children, and injured 220 others. Confused telephone warnings were made which did not specify the location of the bomb, and the police mistakenly moved people towards its location. The Real IRA de…

Families are being crushed by this energy crisis. Small businesses are going to the wall. Carers cannot drive to mind the older people they are looking after. Workers cannot fill their car tanks, even just to get to work, and farmers' costs are spiking at a time when their produce prices are falling. At the heart of this crisis are Government taxes, and no other political party is calling this out. For sure, the war in Iran has significantly accelerated the hardship, but the Government was already taking 60% to 65%…