Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The charge has been laid that the Government is out of touch and simply does not understand the lived reality for many people. Writing today in the Irish Examiner, Caitriona Redmond, a food blogger, writes:

When you're on a tight budget you juggle your money from one crisis to the next. You allocate set amounts for rent or mortgage, energy, household bills, and then food.

People on a tight budget are already juggling.

I will talk briefly about Geraldine, a woman who lives in my constituency. That is not her name because, frankly, she is ashamed of what is happening at the moment. She has worked for 65 and a half years. When she is not in work, she goes to her local shopping centre so that she might be able to keep herself warm because she cannot afford to heat her home. She has juggled, saved and tried her very best. She works damn hard but she cannot afford to heat her home all day when she is on a day off, so she walks around her local shopping centre just to keep warm. To Geraldine and others who are juggling and struggling and who really cannot face a hike in the cost of heating their home, Sinn Féin says the Government should adopt a common-sense approach. It must acknowledge that carbon tax increases where there are no alternatives are unfair. This woman has no alternative and all the carbon tax increases do is make sure she will be cold or she will go to her local shopping centre just to stay warm. What we are asking for with this motion is that the Government is fair to people who simply cannot afford another increase in the cost of heating their home because people will be cold.

It is an issue of fairness; this is not about climate change. The Minister of State knows it is not about climate change because Geraldine, just like everybody else, wants to play her part and do her bit, but she does not want to be cold. Therefore, we are asking the Minister of State to defer yet another increase because she is already struggling.

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