Over the weekend, we had what is being called a protest. Last night, I watched the Garda Commissioner speak to the public and his members about the disgusting retaliation that is being rained down on members of An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces who did nothing other than their job. At the end of the day, we all support the right to protest. The blockade of vital national resources, however, is not a protest. It is an act of thuggery. It is an act that sets out to damage the citizens of this country who have freedom of movement in this country.

Let me make an analogy. I was the sergeant in charge of the front section of the riot platoon on the day Frank Stagg was buried 50 years ago. I was surrounded by 15,000 mourners on that day who were very angry over what happened, and rightly so. Frank Stagg was allowed to die in jail of starvation. Yet, not one of those protestors moved to do any damage to any of us who were in the riot squad that day. No garda suffered on that day. Two gardaí were on that grave approximately six months after Frank Stagg was buried and no one ever did anything to intimidate any of those gardaí.

We now have a situation where anybody feels they can take up a mobile phone, spend their time walking around videoing gardaí and then have the audacity to say they are being badly treated. They blocked the main street of this city. They locked down the city. They denied people access to funerals, cancer care and the ability to look after their young.

Maybe the Government did not get it right. There is currently a debate in the Dáil on a motion of no confidence. I think it is the 12th such motion in as many months. It has become a nonsense. At the end of the day, the Government got it wrong. I would much prefer to see all parties come together and bring forward their ideas to resolve things rather than taking lumps out of one another for the sake of it. For God’s sake, let our uniformed services do their jobs. How dare anyone try to intimidate them. I support Justin Kelly 100%.

Yesterday and over the past number of days, I met with many of the people who were protesting across County Wexford. They are not the same people who are being portrayed in the media. These are ordinary working people who get up early in the morning in the dark and work through the day until dark. They are people who drive machinery and tractors. They are truck, lorry and bus drivers. They are the people who bring food across the country and take it out of fields. They are the people who bring children to school in the morning. Yes, they have incredible frustration with Government policy around fuel, but many said to me that their main frustration is the amount of taxation the Government is taking from hard-working people. They feel penalised by income tax levels, USC, PRSI and the low rate at which the top rate of tax kicks in.

They feel that they cannot work overtime and feel incredibly frustrated at how much they are paying into a pot from which they get little. They are the essence of the squeezed middle: people who are working hard, trying to get ahead but find it difficult to make ends meet. This Government has to hear clearly what they have said. It has to reflect deeply on what they have said and it has to get the message that hard-working people need lower rates of taxation to get ahead in this country. I am going to speak again on this later. I will certainly do what I can within the Fine Gael parliamentary party to be a voice for these people. The people I met are ordinary decent people and I will certainly do everything I can to take that message back to the Government.

There is an interesting contrast between the Government Members in this House and what is going on in the Dáil. I was listening before I came in here. I commend them on speaking out and saying that the Government got it wrong because it really got it wrong. The vote of no confidence that is being debated in the Dáil at the moment is as a result of people crying out for help. This not just about protests - and I will speak about the people I stood with in County Laois for six days - but this is an accumulation of people's sheer frustration that has been building in this country for a long time before Trump ever attacked Iran. This is about the cost-of-living crisis that the Government was failing to recognise, the housing crisis, homeless numbers rising, a health service under constant pressure with 900,000 people on hospital waiting lists and thousands of young people leaving the country every year. This is why it came to a no confidence vote. This is why four different people sent me thousands of signatures on petitions asking us to bring forward a vote of no confidence in this Government. It is because people are not happy.

In the meantime, the Government wastes so much of taxpayers' money. Some €2.4 billion has been spent on a children's hospital that is still not finished and is heading into its 19th completion date. A total of €750,000 was spent on 14 steps around the corner in Dublin - golden steps for golden circles - €350,000 on a bike shed that is an absolute shambles; €1 million on a printer that did not even fit and another €7 million on a path in Cork. Come on, lads, the people are all seeing these things and they are asking how the Government is always able to waste taxpayers' money and there is never enough for ordinary people who are paying their taxes and getting little in return. We have a National Ambulance Service strike coming soon. The service is on the brink of not coping. Families are struggling. Disability advocacy groups, who are outside Leinster House day in and day out, are telling us that people are choosing heating over eating. Workers are stretched to the limit and then fuel prices rise. This is why people took to protesting. They have had enough. However, instead of listening, what did this Government do? It ignored the protestors and then threatened them. It threatened to bring the Army on the protestors. It was pure arrogance. The statements we have heard in the Dáil today are not acceptable as is the way the Government talks about these ordinary men and women that have stood day and night. Our communities have supported them. They have not blocked anything. Their communities have come out and rallied behind them. I fully support them and think that every TD should vote no confidence in this Government because it has totally lost the faith of the people.