Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We have had ongoing discussions with the European Commission. As I said earlier, it will be coming out with further revisions to the rule book and there are a variety of different mechanisms being used across Europe. Deputy Bríd Smith mentioned some of the price caps. Other mechanisms, such as revenues from the emissions trading system, ETS, and VAT, have been used. There are a variety of different mechanisms, including excise duty. We have not finalised any measures. The Minister for Finance has a key role working within the European context and we will do further work in that regard. I would not rule anything out. Nothing is finalised. There has been media commentary about a swing mechanism around excise duty, which has real advantages in terms of smoothing out and what happens if there is an excise cut and prices go up further. However, there are difficulties around that legally so it may not be possible. With regard to tax, we have to use legislation and make sure it is all legally correct.

While we are looking at additional measures, they will not protect fully from the scale of price increases. We should be clear on that. The increases are beyond compare. If we did try to fully protect everything, that would have immediate effects on the other budgets the Exchequer has to fund, such as for education or social welfare. We will have additional costs as a result of this crisis. The €500 million package, on top of what was done in the budget last October, was the right response. We were not intending to do anything further until October but the war has changed that. As I said, whatever mechanism is used will not be just on the tax side, on excise or VAT. It will also have to be the mechanisms I was discussing with Deputy Bruton on the efficiency side as well. If the State were to try to reverse all the global increases in coal, oil and gas prices, that would burst the budget.

With regard to the one-stop shop, aggregation and apprenticeships, we are on track. I had a meeting with the officials yesterday and got an update on this. We are on track to start announcing double figures in the next week. My understanding is that the numbers already going through the process to get up and running in that timeframe are as we would expect. We have a certain advantage in that we, and the SEAI in particular, have been working on this for 22 years. The SEAI has been given very significant additional resources. As well as the €22 million the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science put in place for the green skills action programme in last year's budget, recognising those sorts of apprenticeships, we have a number of mechanisms in place. The SEAI and the industry have built up expertise over 20 years of learning by doing, making mistakes and adjusting, so we are well placed to hit the ground running on this. Not only has there been an incredible domestic response but we are hearing that the phones have been ringing off the hook at those apprenticeship schemes in recent weeks following that announcement. That is encouraging. We are well placed and will be able to deliver that sort of innovative use with the one-stop shop. These companies will have to be good at getting the apprenticeships up and running and helping them find work but also targeting households and aggregating them.