Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, I would. Sinn Féin's policy is very clear in this regard. If we look at the issue of price and whether continuing price rises will deter people from jumping into a car, we need only consider what has happened in the past year or year and a half, when the price of petrol and diesel went through the roof. At some points, a litre cost €2.20. That did not stop people from using their car to get from A to B. People in my community still need to get to appointments with the dentist, doctor or nurse and to get to their place of work. In many cases, there are no real, accessible alternatives to driving. We need to see the necessary investment to ensure people can transition to alternatives. We have just had a discussion on another environmental tax, which I agree with, as I did in 2019. Taxation can be used to encourage change, but the change we want people to make must be available and affordable. That is the issue I have.

Going back to the core of it, this issue is not hypothecated in law. This means that if it is done, it would not be taking away €57 million from investment that is earmarked from carbon tax resources. It can be done through other taxation methods. All of these moneys go into one big pot and the Government tells us it will act on the principle that the pot will be used to invest elsewhere.

More than a third of households across the State - 37% - did not get any direct energy supports from the Government. I am not at all disputing the necessity of support for our capital city and elsewhere but I am pointing out a reality. If the situation were reversed, such that everywhere else bar the likes of Dublin got energy supports, there would be an issue. If we look at the data from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, we can see that in our larger cities, 97% or 98% of households use gas as the primary method of heating their homes. There is support there for them. It might be only a little support but it is there. The same is not true for households that use home heating oil. In my constituency, two thirds of households use it, as is the case in Galway, Roscommon and Leitrim. The interesting thing about those constituencies is that they are the ones with the highest levels of poverty and deprivation and some of the worst-insulated homes. That is a factor here.

The Government is making a conscious policy decision. If it were to poverty-proof measures and make decisions based on the evidence, it would of course be reducing the cost of home heating oil temporarily, just as it has introduced other types of supports. This legislation does not include a single reference to carbon tax. It is colloquially called that but it is mineral oil tax. There is no impediment to making a decision to reduce the cost for families to heat their homes in the coming months. I strongly urge the Government to do so. We can debate other measures the Government is taking to support vulnerable households as much as the Minister wants. That is fine. However, it does not take away from the fact that for 37% of households, the Government is increasing the cost of keeping their homes warm this year. It does not take away from the fact that in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, there was no direct support for those householders to keep their families warm. It does not take away from the fact there is no legal impediment to providing that support.

The reality is that the €57 million this would cost is small in the scale of the overall budgetary arithmetic, with a €6 billion surplus being forecast for this year. It is a measure that should be supported. To call a spade a spade, because the Green Party is in government and because the mineral oil tax is colloquially called a carbon tax, the Government will not budge on this, no matter how cold it gets and how hard-pressed householders are to keep their houses warm this year.