Farmers and fishermen fuel costs
Deputy Mac Lochlainn sought statements on the severe fuel and food-cost pressures on farmers and fishermen, while Deputy Boyd Barrett also raised the worsening homelessness crisis.
The war in Ukraine has led the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to put serious challenges to farmers across the country around food provision. However, the huge increases in fuel, as the Taoiseach knows, have had a devastating impact on farmers and fishermen. Fishermen all around the coast are telling us that they cannot go out to sea, given these costs. Yet, there is no intervention. We asked for statements on this issue, so that we could put the concerns we are hearing from farmers and fishermen across the country directly to the Minister, focus on this and hear what the Government’s plans are to assist the fishing and farming industries to meet the needs of our people in terms of food supply and food security.
Will the Taoiseach please make time this week for that to happen?
Comment on this
After a very brief respite during Covid-19 on the homeless situation because of the temporary eviction ban and the ban on further rent increases, now that those measures have been lifted, the family homeless situation is once again spiralling out of control. We need to address it in this House as a matter of absolute urgency. The figures are back up towards 10,000 people. In the past few days, I have been informed of 60 families who are going to be evicted from the Shannon Arms apartment complex in Limerick.
Yesterday, I spent most of the day on the telephone with a mother of three, whose husband works 12-hour shifts in a Dublin hospital, who was sitting in a park and had nowhere to live. This is someone whose husband protected us on the front line and now the family are homeless. They have been looking for tenancies for six months but they cannot find them. I am hearing story after story. The situation is getting decisively worse. We need to address it in this House as a matter of absolute urgency and have a discussion about what additional emergency measures we will take to stop the homelessness crisis spiralling out of control.