Micheál Martin moves a motion of confidence in the Government, defending a comprehensive response to rising oil prices and condemning recent blockades that threatened fuel supplies and services. He sets out the Government's immediate and long-term approach to protect jobs, reduce costs and defend democratic behaviour.
Support package and immediate measures
Micheál Martin outlines the Government's interventions since the onset of international shocks and the recent Middle East conflict, noting an initial €250 million duty cut and a further targeted €500 million package to shield families, transport, food production, haulage and fisheries. He emphasises that Ireland's support measures are proportionately larger than those in most European countries and directly targeted to protect jobs.
Impact of blockades and defence of public services
Martin condemns last week's blockade of ports and refineries as a step beyond legitimate protest that risked vital supplies, cancer treatments and the livelihoods of export-dependent firms. He praises the Gardaí and Army for restoring access and stresses the need to prosecute those responsible for threats and intimidation against Gardaí, drivers and public representatives.
Longer-term priorities and democratic norms
The Taoiseach links immediate relief with structural reform, promising to return to the Dáil to discuss investment plans to lower energy costs permanently. He warns against political rhetoric that legitimises extreme groups, defends parliamentary democracy and insists that sustainable supports must be balanced with funding for public services and the capacity to absorb future shocks.
Political context and consequences
Martin challenges opposition claims that the Government has done nothing, citing weekly net spending on supports versus additional revenue and arguing that tough choices are unavoidable. He frames the debate as one between responsible governance that protects services and actions that risk economic damage and social harm.
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Thank you, Keann Comhairle, and I formally move the motion of confidence in the Government. And I welcome this debate, Keann Comhairle, and the opportunity to again discuss important issues facing our people. Each of us here has a mandate and a duty to show respect for others and to conduct a debate which shows respect for the people by acknowledging the full range of concerns at this deeply challenging moment in history. We need to talk about the huge impact of rising oil prices, but also the wider context of protecting jobs, funding services, investing to get costs down, and getting Ireland through a period of international turmoil. Wars and a pandemic has led to sustained pressure on costs faced by families and businesses for nearly five years. Government has had to act on a wide range of fronts, including securing basic supplies. There are structural issues which have to be addressed. I will be happy to return to the Dáil to discuss our investment plans for permanently reducing the upward pressure on key costs, and especially energy costs. I welcome an honest debate about getting electricity prices permanently down in international terms. The House will note the report this morning which says explicitly that since 2022 government measures have shielded consumers considerably. However, for today I will focus on the immediate issue of recent major increases in costs arising from rising oil prices. The opposition claims that nothing has been done to help people, that other countries are helping more, and that the government could easily sort out everything. This is, of course, manifestly untrue, and directly ignores the fact that we are implementing significant action, that this goes beyond anything being done elsewhere, and that the core concern pushing up oil prices is an international conflict, war in the Middle East between the US, Israel, and Iran. From the first days of this latest conflict, we have been directly taking action to reduce the impact on Ireland and have held ongoing discussions with representatives of the full range of groups impacted. The first intervention which we implemented last month helped through cutting duties, benefiting everyone, and also directly helping families, and it amounted to €250 million. The latest measures go further and are based on detailed discussions with different sectors about their specific needs, and they are designed to very directly help protect jobs and keep costs down. At €500 million, it is a comprehensive package. It is not about helping special interest groups. We all depend on transport, food production, haulage, fisheries, and other fuel-intensive industries, and that is why we are implementing specific measures tailored to these critical areas. These reflect the ongoing open and constructive discussions and information we have had with representative bodies. I am not going to attempt to address all of the false claims by opposition deputies, but I will reply to a clearly untrue statement by Deputy Carty. He claimed the Irish Government is the biggest profiteer, his words, on oil prices, and that budget coffers were being swelled. The Deputy is intelligent enough and has enough access to research to know that this is flat out untrue. As the publicly available facts show, the Government is already spending dramatically more on measures to help people with fuel costs than it is receiving in extra taxes. Before today, the measures provided by Government was costing close to €28 million a week, while the additional revenue has averaged €4 million. Our actions also amount to proportionately the largest assistance package of any European country. The closest any country comes is Spain, where the support package is over a quarter smaller. The packages in Germany and Poland are roughly 90% lower than the supports we are implementing. As for Northern Ireland, the actions taken by the Executive and the British Government combined are a fraction of what we are implementing. The basic core claim that we are doing nothing and are falling behind other countries is simply untrue. One thing the opposition never does is respect the fact that we have to fund social services and investments. We have to secure basic energy and food supplies and keep open trade and exports, exports which are responsible for 90% of what we produce in any one year. We have to protect our ability to overcome new shocks which may arise. The measures we are implementing involve a very significant amount of public resources and directly support those being hit by the shock of increasing world fuel prices. They go further than other governments and combine both general and targeted assistance. As I have said, I am happy to return to the House to discuss prices in general and action on affordability. A combination of immediate and long-term actions is required, but any politician here who pretends that there are no hard choices to be made is being dishonest and they know it. What the people have a right to is to sustainable supports combined with sustained action to tackle the structural drivers of rising costs, and this has to be the focus. Today it is important, of course, to address events of the last week. Our action and our engagement on fuel prices was ongoing before the blockade and it will continue well after the blockade. This is a country which ranks in the top ten in the world for freedom of speech, the right to protest and the right of democratic participation. Every week the streets outside of Leinster House are filled with groups passionately advocating for their cause. People speak up looking for funding for local services, for special education supports, for child care, for disability services, for pensions and also for many other political, environmental and social issues. These demonstrations often involve closing roads in coordination with an English economy. The general public and businesses accept the inconvenience as part of what comes with living in an active democracy. The blockade of critical infrastructure of last week went far beyond this. It was a destructive blockade which threatened to cause much deeper damage. Everybody has a right to protest, but nobody has a right to appoint themselves as the voice of the people and to threaten the jobs and livelihoods of many thousands of families. Nobody has the right to prevent people from getting to cancer treatment, to be visited by their carer, to distribute vital supplies. The House needs to face up to the fact that these actions were very directly threatening the basic fuel supplies of the country. This went far beyond the drying up of fuel pumps which people saw throughout the country. We were informed in government that our only refinery was in danger of being closed and that export-dependent companies were about to start sending workers home. The ports and refinery blockade meant that at the very time when global supplies are scarce, oil intended for Ireland was about to be diverted elsewhere. I absolutely understand the pressures people feel and the need for measures to reduce the impact of rising oil prices. That said, no group has the right to say to the rest of the country that it will decide who gets fuel to go to work, that it decides who gets fuel in general, or that it decides that it will block Irish firms from exporting the goods which pay workers' wages. No action by government was taken in haste. Time was given for people to make their point, but action was required and it was taken. The Gardaí acted with the utmost professionalism under often extreme pressure and with the specialist support of the Army lifted the blockades. I want to again thank them for their work and I would also like to thank the officials and ministers in various departments who worked tirelessly to make sure that essential services, particularly health services, remained available in the face of extreme challenges. There is another deeply important point arising from recent weeks concerning the nature of political behaviour in our country. There are many extreme groups which claim to speak on behalf of the people without ever securing the support of the people. It is standard practice for people to shout in the streets and online that they are the real people of Ireland and that the Dáil and the government are an unrepresentative elite who know nothing and care less about this country. Parliamentary democracy is something we should all affirm and defend. The great majority of people who have protested have done so reasonably and democratically. We all saw that this was not the case for some other elements. Everyone here should understand that you can share platforms with them, express your support for them, call them the voice of the people and then deny your responsibility for legitimising them. I condemn utterly the sinister targeting of Gardaí, of oil lorry drivers and I have told the Commissioner that we will fully support his efforts to find and prosecute those involved. I also condemn the direct and indirect threats to deputies and to ministers. The online threats against homes and offices should be condemned by everyone here. We should all be concerned with the attempts to import extreme ideologies here, something we saw with the number of online social media accounts originating from America, Britain and elsewhere, which were spreading inflammatory comments about the blockade. In reality, we are in a period of dramatically escalating angry rhetoric in politics and the escalating rhetoric of opposition here too is unprecedented. I would say finally that the government has a clear democratic mandate. We have an ambitious programme for investment in services, support and people and protecting our country. On this issue and on the fundamental challenge of getting our country through a period of deep and rapidly evolving international challenges, as Taoiseach and as a government, we are clear-sighted, resolute and determined to do what we need to do to protect and defend our social and economic progress.
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