Mattie McGrath slams quangos and schemes, warns small businesses

I am very similar to my colleague here. We are dancing around and ahead of a needle here with all these grandiose schemes, like yesterday that was introduced, eagerly awaited and wanted the retrofit scheme and people want to engage with it, but it is going to cost them 500. I am talking about people on the margins. 500 euro to get an assessment, to get back 250 whenever. But I have people waiting two and a half years already for a CEI. I understand from Richard, who I thank him for attending that briefing yesterday, and he understands the building, and that this scheme is not going to start until the fall of the year. Why do you keep announcing it then? Like going out fishing and throwing out a fly to catch a sardine or a trout, hopefully. Don't be fooling with the public. They are sick and tired of schemes being announced. You are telling us then that the credit unions and the banks, credit unions will, certainly. The banks are not closed for business. People are asking for things like that. You are asking them to ask where you are walking and what you are doing. Every employment is precarious as far as their concern. But on this situation here, the competitive authority, I have said it numerous times, they are both useless, toothless and fruitless. And we have authorities for everything now. Everything. And all it seems to be is a plaque maybe that size a bit bigger up on the wall. Lovely offices, plush offices, nice big swivel seats and desks and a board and employees. And I have not been passionate about anybody. But we have so many quangos. Quangoland. Quangoland is alive and flourishing. And they don't need any nitrogen to do it. It's just flourishing. And there are insiders and there are jobs for the buys and friends of political parties and whatever. Pind them. And they have no function because they are doing nothing. Take the meat cartels. My goodness, we all stood out at the factories two years ago here. Take the meat cartels in this country. Shocking the way the farmers have been treated. Take the price. Deputy Healey Ray and myself went down here with the IFA, but five years ago, one Christmas, to Dunn Stores and did a protest. And they filled, was it three or four shopping trolleys with water level, with goods and Dunn Stores. The whole lot came to, I think, 16 or 18 euros. Shocking. Lost leaders, all these things. They are getting it back in other ways. But they are selling all these things as kind of champions and low-cost selling. Shocking. And they are putting the only shopkeeper, the only fair, you know, a band, you know, that looks after the people. And when there is raffles on them, when there is a fund raise or someone seeks, they are the first person to give us part prize. When there is raffles on, when there is a fund raise or someone is sick, they are the first person to give a spot price. They are being trodden on. I said it this morning, all the globalists, it is a globalist policy, and we are the new country of expertise in business. I see today and I will be attacked for saying, as an employer myself, I call about it, that now we are going to give an extra 12-day sick leave. How are small businesses that are clinging on? You should know this, Minister, as a Minister for your interests, hanging on the fingernails after Covid. It is one scheme, a promise after another, but they are all heaped on top of these people who cannot afford to pay, and they will be doomed to shut, going out of business. The final step of all the promises, is everybody going to be on their own employment register? We cannot manage that, but the beef cocktails and some of them were bailed out in bygone days and they got away and they are not helpful to anybody. Insurance, my goodness, they are racket and they carry on, and we hear every day of the week on different radio programmes about shopping around and elderly people and all kinds of penalties and just loading on and loading on and loading on. There is not a fair crack of the whip for any, whether you are young, there is no fairness at all in the system, and we have an insurance regulator. You have a regulator set for everything now. Everything. Everything. And also, as I said, at the EU tender, the biggest load of baloney as well. Certain levels are at the EU level. I have a community now in my county who got successful, and it is great work. Wonderful community shop and enterprise, and they got granted before COVID. But now the prices have doubled and nearly tripled, and they cannot do it in that kind of funding. So now they want to know that they want to do it themselves, which is overseen by the department and by a local engineer and architects, and do it themselves. They cannot get around it. They are killing the spirit of the people. The spirit of the Irish people has been magnificent, and the spirit of the male has been magnificent throughout our country, and neighbourhoods, and, as I said, helping out and back to the arrangement, but they cannot. EU tender is not a way to kill small business. You have to have so many millions in the bank to apply. I am talking about contractors and everything else. The whole works. Transport, and the cartels are there, and the price of fuel now. I am talking about the NTA now, and I am talking about bus transport. I mean, we have JJ Cabernets, who I salute, and many other small operators in my county. And they have been squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed, nothing left to squeeze. Every last drop of blood, they squeezed at them. But you have empty courses to go out the door here, there are double-decker buses up and down, one after the other, and they nailed in a water and stick it in some bus. There is no one inside them. But no problem, this is a double, they can have an annual life. As I said also, as I said also, the whole situation with the fertiliser. Denmark, Sweden, France, and all the other countries have intervened in the pig industry, in the EU, and they are allowed to, and the EU commissioner was before the committee, and the agriculture committee and Deputy Collins was there and heard them. The Irish government can intervene, and they can subsidise the fertiliser for the farmers. What's going to happen? The food stuff is going to be more expensive for the mamma's purses. Deputy Hillary Ray phrased it around the mamma's purses on Friday evening. It's simple as that. And everything is going the same way. So we have regulators for everything, but we need someone to get in and regulate these regulators, and take them out and put them on a training course, and make them understand what their job is, and what their role is. They are political hacks an awful lot of them, and they are in there, creamed it off. And they are just, as I said, putting people in the opinion of colour. I also said that, you know, I mentioned the last leaders and the supermarkets, and the way they are punishing the small shops. We have seen it since the pandemic. There is not a small shop left in the capital. Some of them have left a lift in the country, but look at that post, look at the telephone. Albert Reynolds, I saw him in an audition, went away from the phone. Everyone had a phone in their house in a month. Now you wait 12, maybe two years to get a phone, and you wait five and six months to get it repaired. And the people waiting for hours on the phone, the customer service is appalling, some of those big companies and the monopolies again. It is shocking the way we are treating our people. I said today they are waiting in the long grass, and there is a lot of long grass this year because it has been a mild winter, and it will be grazed fairly bare, but they will have no place to hide when the election will come, because you will be laid out bare naked, and the people can see. Gourmanggut.