Mattie McGrath attacks government over energy and social welfare

Minister, your reply was as brief as almost the Minister that came in, not the Minister of State, but the Minister of State, nothing personal, but I don't know, I don't understand he's not here, and I accept that, but if I see him in the House this evening or today, we'll be very united. We put down this motion in good faith, as we're entitled to do, as elected Huckty Dawley, and as a group, a registered group, a caitlin group here at this House, and we're not going to take any lectures from the Government, or from, certainly not from Deputy Batchett, the Leader of the House, of the Labour Party, Deputy B Smith, or Deputy Jennifer Whitmore, of the Social Democrats, and I welcome the school tour that was here today as well, and to think that we would in any way be disparaging our discipline behind school children, we regularly have school children here, and school tours here ourselves, living in constituencies and all over, and this is the problem we have with this at the moment, a group think, and if you think outside the box, and even offer to pronounce thinking outside the box, and to be wise, and to be careful how we go forward, that we don't cut off our nose, despite our face, you're kind of demonised as a climate in our, we're not sure as thing, we're not sure as thing, and I resent Deputy Batchett's comments that this, our speeches were written, our emotion was written by, I, I, Lolligax, or whatever, nothing could be further from the truth, she might want to look closer at her own party, and the connections they have had, with business interests, over the years, and everything else, not now with us here, it's a disgusting and disparaging remark, to think that we have one researcher, who does an excellent job, who does an excellent job, who does a former senator, and I want to thank him, and the Deputy Collins, who has been pleading with people, and we're not looking for new licenses willy-nilly, we're looking for, to be sure, to keep the lights on, simple and plain, we all know we have to have transition, and Dr Nolan here is talking about it, on a daily basis, since this lovely frame, word, the acronym came up, just transition, it's the most unjust transition, turning down the bogs, turning down coal and gas, coal plants, and everything else, before we have, any alternative, or Deputy Batchett said, we should cycle, we look well at cycling, from Carthus Iveen, to Kerry, or me cycling from Newcastle, to Clannmellar, to Nina, to Walker, and whatever else, and I understand now, I'm not certain, Minister Ryan told people to go to social welfare, he said he, social welfare knew nothing about it, I understand, the Taoiseach has now said it, that people should go to social welfare, I salute the social welfare officers, and CWOs, and the work they've done to COVID and everything else, and the work they continue to do, but to send them off, because of incompetence, and downright baguaging, by the government, what they've done, with the profiteering, that the tax they're taking out of the aisle at the moment, when places like Malta, have it, for 140 litre, a European country, or European colleagues, and we've been told, by the European Commission, which Micheál Martin is, so good to dance, every tune they play, even the tunes are wildly out of tune, he dances anyway, he dances, because he wants to dance into Europe, when he'll be hunted by the people of Cork, hunted, and from the doors, and he's party with them, hunted, but he'll get a big job in Europe, and he's the damage that he's doing, with the fair lint of doing whatever they want, actually, a cheerleader last week, he was, that we should stop Russian gas, I hate this war, it's a horrific war, but, we had these problems, coming up, down the line, at us, with a rise open, anyone could see, before everyone was mentioned, of a war in Ukraine, and that's, put out the pipe and smoke, and yesterday, he replied to Deputy Hillary Ray, he said, he was, all the, Putin, and all the war in, and, in, in, in, in, Ukraine, was all the problems, a total mistoot, so, Deputy Smith then, says, in her, amendment, that she put down, she mentioned, a couple of things, I had to see, that, that, that no threat exists, to Ireland's current supplies of gas, coming from the North Sea, primarily, and she also mentioned, the Moffat plant, the Moffat in, in, in, in Scotland, what happens if there's sabotage, what happens if there's accidents, accidents can happen, and, and, and, the way that, where, again, Deputy Coveney, and, oh, and the Cork Brigade, Michael McGrath's not involved, but the other two, are trying to be stronger than each other, attacking, the Prime Minister, or Prime Minister, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, number 10, at the moment, what if he takes action, and goes down the pipe, and squeezes the pipe, and turns off the water to a trickle, I think, our member, a former Finnegade minister, glibly, with the glass of water, telling us all, he'll turn off the tap to a trickle, this might come home to roost, and it could be with oil, Our motion just merely wants to make sure that we, our children are fed, our families are fed, and our workers can go to work, and our economy can continue, a basic human right, Deputy Noel and his spouses at the start here, of the great men of 1916 and women, and the great men of the 20, 21, 22, 23, many lives that they lost, that they gave up, to form our freedom, and above all, one of the first acts they'd done, as Deputy McNamara referred to, they developed our natural resources, they were men of forward thinking, they were men of, and I say, Deputy McNamara, the people who got injured, and got, and even lost their lives, in the development of that, in, in accidents, and whatever, but they had the foresight, and here we are now, because of a latter-day, Emperor, Emperor with no clothes, Minister Ryan now, has got his second incarnation into the Minister, the Department of Transport, I was part of the government, the last one, and I fundamentally disagree with his policies, but now he's back, and he has both Fine Gael, and Fianna Fáil, and a number of independents, backing whatever he does, so I put it up to the amendments, I welcome Deputy Knoxon's amendment, but I put it up to the independents tonight, to put their money where their mouth is, will this support the government, or will they put bread on the table for the families that they are purporting to represent, they can't have it two ways, you think you can fool the people, and the indoctrination that's going on now, and imagine, and I know you're not supposed to, and I'm a big indulgence, and I'm not supposed to, you're not supposed to, if you're a little of our Oopton, our President, and I don't, but to link the horrific, uh, terror attack in, in, in, in Nigeria, to climate change, we're certainly stretching it, and their speech about there, dealt with that, so I didn't say any more about it, but we're indoctrinating the children, the good children, that are up there, and in our schools across the system, that we're backward thinking, we're not, we have no advice, actually, and we're not allowed to have advice, we're not supposed to have advice, according to Deputy Smith, in, in her diesel guzzling van, I'm surprised she hasn't electric, or doesn't use the bike, I knew she used to use the bike, maybe she's the bike in the back of the van, like Minister Ryan going to Limerick, or the back of the state care, or whatever, the con job is over, the people are hurting, the people, business are clinging on, many of them are reopened from Covid, many of them are having, and more of them are going to close, and God help us all in the winter, when you see the price of oil, now all we're asking is that, the, the, near 60% tax that you take out of the government, because they're ironic, and the most subtle, and not subtle, but I suppose, the most slight thing of it all, is the more the oil goes up, the fuel goes up, the more tax you get out of it. So you're rubbing your hands with lead, like rubbing bags into fat stows, I won't say where, you know where, but anyway, or you might not, but that's what it is, and, and, and the old people used to talk in those relevant terms, and I like to go back and think of the old people, they're wise, and remember, before everyone could ever come up with these retrofitting greenhouses, we'd attach houses, with the small windows and a lovely cold, cosy roof that were cold in the summer, and warm in the winter, before ever we had all this green indoctrination, that we have to go green, we're all for transition, and proper transition, but not at the rate we're doing it, and not at blindly blindfolded, completely blindfolded, ears blocked, and, and, and, and, you know what I mean, and no glasses, spectacons, and you're all voting cannon fodder for it, but you'll get some voting cannon fodder when the people will go in with their crown louis, into the belt box, and they'll give you some rude awakening, and you'll want, you'll want glasses to see, to look at the number of papers, and you'll see whether you are figuring on them, none of the above, because you have, instead of protecting the people, which is your duty, solemn duty, and being elected, and got the seal of office out in, out in, out in the Phoenix, out in the Phoenix Park, from the President, it is to protect our citizens, not to perish them, not to destroy them, not to demoralise them, not to, and to hurt them so much, and we are in so many ways, by penal taxes, by punitive measures, by going blindly into, uh, in different ways of energy, which we support, by the way, but they won't be here for maybe eight, ten years, we heard about, uh, the wonderful project, and I was delighted to hear about it, the solar farm out in Wicklow, and now we find there's another con job, it isn't even connected to the grid yet, what happened to all the people that are retrofitting, that have went into small micro-regeneration, they can't get onto the grid, you're fooling the people at every angle, you're robbing them, and pillaging them, and Cromwell didn't do the like of it, and we resisted them out of Clonmel and Tipperary, and you have connections in, in Adfin and all, I know, but we, we kept them out, but we can't keep the ravages of, of the, this trio here, um, um, um, Taoiseach Martin, to me, the evolving Taoiseach, uh, Brett Kerry, your leader, and indeed, Minister Reign, we just can't, and here I'll say to me, sleep at the wheels, I've told us, me and them are doing all the bull in the parliamentary parties, that's little good to the people that want, they can't afford to put their, fill their lunch boxes, they can't afford to go, fill the car to go to work, what about the contractors who are trying to make the, and the farmers are trying to make the crops now, to produce the food, and they need one, nearly 160 a gallon, and then this nonsense of an ad blue, which has gone up fourfold in the last, in the last, um, 12 months, patent nonsense, and this is something we're supposed to buy into, to use it, and it's gone up by four times, the gouging that's going on there, but we'll take no lecture from the deputies Batchick, deputies Whitmer, deputies, or yourself either, or indeed, deputies, deputies Smith, but of anyone else, about our honesty and integrity, when tightly we've done our motion here, we put it down, and we don't work for any aisle bands, or any aisle, uh, oligarchs, and the people need to look close at their home, to see who's funding them, and who support they've got, and Mr Soros and others, and where the money is flowing from, how dare they? We're honest representatives of the people, elected by the people of this house, and we'll continue to do so, as long as we're elected, and there's blood running in our veins, and I, we want to help the people, and we'll see tonight how many more people are going to support us or not, but we stand proud of our record here, we're not climate change deniers, we're trying to look after our people, uh, because it's our primary duty, as elected people here, to represent the people, to look after their interests. Go raibh maith agaibh agaibh agaibh agaibh agaibh agaibh agaibh. Thank you.