The Government’s support package of €505 million for farmers, hauliers, and the construction industry is a real slap in the face of ordinary hard pressed commuters, and citizens of this state, who don’t drive large expensive HGVs, agricultural tractors, or buses, and who don’t benefit from a reduction in green diesel prices.
Those large scale blockades that virtually shut the country down, benefited a small cohort of protestors who don’t make up the majority of tax-paying citizens of this state.
While each of the aforementioned sectors are important in their own way, the fact that the Government was willing to introduce a large package that benefited this cohort, on top of the €250 million package already introduced, shows to me, and I’m sure many more hard pressed citizens of this state, who the real beneficiaries of this dispute were.
In last year’s budget the Government introduced €9.4 billion worth of spending, while removing energy credits, reducing disability payment by €1,400, increasing student fees, increasing transport and fuel costs, while retaining carbon taxes and the so-called temporary USC.
All this in a volatile global market, created by a few madmen, that has seen cost of living and fuel price increases, putting added pressure on families, workers and consumers alike.
This, against an ESRI report that stated that people would be worse off when this budget was introduced, was borne out this year when the number of people unable to pay their electricity bills reached 317,000 and fuel prices skyrocketed,
Again the vast majority of working citizens of this state, not on welfare packages, have not seen the fruits of their labours.
They have paid the cost of bad decision-making and a failure in proper forward planning for any or all eventualities.
While there are many things out of our control, with wars raging in Europe and the Middle East, we once again have a €9 billion budget surplus, well above the €4billion that was predicted, but our Government wants us to get through this summer, if we are lucky enough to have a long dry spell, before
doing anything until the next budget.
Maybe those of us who don’t benefit, or have not benefited, from Government subsidies or support packages, need to voice our concerns in a more boisterous, in your face type of protest.
Yours,
Christy Galligan,
Letterkenny