Paul Murphy: End the Fuel Ripoff - Free Buses & Price Caps

Thanks Slash Ciann Comhairle. Had a look at petrol and diesel prices before I came in here. The Circle K on Belguard Road in Tala is charging 185 a litre for diesel and 184 a litre for petrol, even after the two rounds of VAT and excise cuts. A year ago the average price for diesel was 176 and for petrol it was 168, so there is still a big additional cost for ordinary people. In my constituency many people are basically forced to drive because public transport is so bad and inadequate, it depends on where they're going obviously. The least the government should do during the fuel crisis, you should have done it a long time ago, but you should do it now, is to abolish fares for public transport and put on a load of additional buses so the service is made frequent and reliable. The other thing that we need is to have price caps on petrol and diesel so that every VAT and excise cut that we see are not swallowed up by price increases. People need certainty that prices won't go any higher than 175 a litre, which is the price cap in People Before Profit's emergency price controls bill. We first introduced that bill during the last energy crisis. It's even more important now when oil prices are so volatile and every day is bringing different news about when or if Trump and Netanyahu's illegal war will finally end. The finance bill here today is really only a drop in the ocean compared to the worsening cost-of-living crisis that people are facing every single day. It's not only motorists that need help with rising costs, it's everyone who is forced to cut back on their weekly shop. The four in ten parents who say that they go without or go with less so that their kids can eat properly. It's everyone who can't pay rents that the government has decided should go up higher and higher and higher in order to attract in more vultures to resolve our supply problem ultimately someday long into the future. Everyone behind on their energy bills. Hundreds of thousands of people because prices are the highest in Europe. It's disabled people who had about 1400 euros cruelly taken from them in the last budget despite the government having billions of euros in surplus. Now we have the ESB announcing another 8% increase in electricity and gas. People are at the end of their tether. They just haven't got it. They can't be bled dry by a government, by landlords, by energy companies any longer. The ripoff has to stop. A part of the electricity price increases that we're seeing, we saw the report last week from Friends of the Earth, it's because this government is beholden to big tech. It's because the government has laid out the red carpet for the big tech and their data centers to use as much electricity as they want. We heard today, this morning in the AI committee, that we're potentially on track to a situation where the data centers are going to use as much electricity as all the rest of the economy, all the rest of the society combined. So we're currently well over 20% of electricity but we're on track to them literally using 50% of electricity in this country. And that is pushing up prices for ordinary people. Ordinary people in this country have already paid hundreds of euros as a consequence for that and the government likes to defend it with really unfounded, ridiculous claims in terms of jobs. They're trotting out this KPMG report claiming 870,000 odd jobs being related to data centers, which they're counting every job that uses cloud computing and thereby fundamentally missing the point of what it is for something to be in the cloud, meaning that can be accessed anywhere, there's no benefit to it being around the corner from you or in the same country as you as opposed to being somewhere else. Something interesting because the government used to answer questions in the past about how many people are directly working for data centers and then they stopped. Five or six years ago they simply stopped answering questions about that. They would just refuse to answer that question and instead talk about all the people who benefit from data centers. But if you read what comes from the data center lobby themselves they let the cat out of the bag. There's an article in the Irish Times in December of last year where Tom Parlin, who is the rep for the data center lobbyists in this country, spoke about them directly employing 1,800 people. 1,800 people! How many jobs are lost as a consequence of the data centers and the use of AI to replace jobs? We've seen that in terms of covalent, we're seeing it elsewhere in the economy. More jobs are being lost as a result of these data centers than are being added. So we need to tackle this and a serious plan to tackle the cost of living crisis simultaneously involves tackling the climate crisis. It means trying to reduce energy usage instead of expanding it, no more data centers, getting people out of cars into free and frequent public transport, a nationalized and not-for-profit electricity system that drives investment in renewables but that gives people then, with that you have price controls, you give people certainty while we have the transition taking place. The other thing that has to happen is a fight for higher wages. A few weeks ago I introduced a bill that would guarantee apprentices and young workers are paid at least the national minimum wage. I mean that shouldn't sound like a very big ask, it's not something that should require legislation. But right now craft apprentices are being paid as little as 7.67 an hour. That's six euros and 48 cents less than the national minimum wage. We have a national minimum wage that is inadequate, that is recognized not to be the living wage and then we legally say that young people, those under the age of 20 and apprentices are legally allowed to be paid a lot less than this inadequate minimum wage. On what planet are people meant to survive on 7.67 an hour? A first year motor mechanic wrote to me after I introduced the bill saying that he's working 40 hours a week on 6.20 an hour. He's expected to pay for his own tools with only a 250 euro tool allowance. He points out that to even get an apprenticeship in most trades you have to have a driver's license, so he has to pay extortionate insurance on top of car loan repayments. He's walking away with 250 euros a week and is left with only 120 euros after bills. He says that quote taking into account the rising cost of living and the expenses of day to day life it's nearly unbearable and as a worker I feel disheartened and it's hard to get out of bed in the morning some days. On top of this he says quote the greed of trade employers in Ireland is sickening. I couldn't agree more. That greed and the dismissive attitude of this government towards young workers is directly contributing to the housing crisis because it means there aren't enough skilled construction workers to build the houses that we need. There aren't enough skilled mechanics to run the bus service properly. A lack of mechanics is the main reason that Dublin Bus and Go Ahead constantly give for ghost buses and cancellations. Another 20 year old apprentice wrote to me to say that quote the lack of young lads and women going into trade is because of the terrible pay that every employer in Ireland is paying them. I'm looking to move out of home and buy or build a house but I can't afford to do so because I can't get a mortgage from the bank because I'm an apprentice and making far less than the minimum wage. The situation of young workers and apprentices sums up the cost of living crisis for many people in this country. Wages are far too low, the cost of living is far too high. But what's the government doing in response? The Low Pay Commission recommended abolishing sub-minimum wage rates for young workers back in March 2024. That was after we had proposed a bill to abolish these rates for young workers in the Dáil. It had passed second stage. The government had placed a time amendment on it. The time amendment of the year had passed. They said we need to look into it. Low Pay Commission looked into it. The SRI looked into it. It recommended that they be abolished. The government then said they promised to look into it but then about a year ago they said we're not going to do anything on it until 2029. We won't make a decision where you're going to do it. We don't even have a commitment that you're going to abolish these incredible exploitative sub-minimum wage rates in 2029. We just have a commitment that you're going to think about it back in in 2029. And in the meantime more and more employers are using sub-minimum pay rates as a loophole to avoid paying the minimum wage. It's gone up from 20% of young workers, those who could be paid less than minimum wage, one in five, actually being paid less than the minimum wage in 2020, now to 30%. Almost one in three young workers being legally paid less than the minimum wage. Now we have Fianna Fáil TDs talking about bypassing the Low Pay Commission altogether and using a different mechanism to set the minimum wage that gets rid of any benchmarking with the public sector or multinational pay rates. The only reason to do so is to keep the minimum wage artificially low so bosses can make even bigger profits. It's obvious from how this government is treating workers that they think they can do whatever they want and they won't fight back. But the fuel protests show that when people power takes them on the government is weak and they can be forced to crumble very quickly and forced to give concession. The reason the hauliers and transport operators are getting a bailout in this bill is because they forced it out of the government through militant protest. There's a lesson there for the trade union movement that politely going into pay talks over and over and playing by the rules is getting them nowhere. The government has proven it will only listen to militant protests. So that's what workers need to do. They need to get organized into trade unions, need to fight within those trade unions for militant action for above inflation pay rates to ensure that they're not left behind, they're not left pushed in a position of deeper and deeper deprivation as a consequence of the cost of living crisis.