Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

First, it is important to say that nobody on these benches has suggested that the carbon tax has led to the current energy cost hikes. I would have thought that was quite obvious. However, what we are saying quite clearly is that heaping additional costs from 1 May, when people are already struggling and going cold in their homes, is not the right thing to do. Whatever way it is put, including the package and the measures from the budget last year, people's energy bills are going to increase from 1 May.

That is a simple fact.

The Minister of State has taken issue regarding, as he put it, the remedy for the 50% increase in the cost of home heating oil not being the removal of the carbon tax increase. What is his remedy? The vast majority of the package announced a couple of weeks ago is going to everyone. The fuel allowance measure will only go to those who currently receive the fuel allowance. Those who are seriously ill and on illness benefit cannot get the fuel allowance. Low-income households that rely on the working family payment to top up poor wages do not get the fuel allowance either. The fuel allowance is not a silver bullet in the context of the current energy crisis. Aside from the electricity credit, the vast majority of workers and families will receive no assistance with their heating costs moving forward.

At a time when people are going cold in their homes, are we supposed to tell them there is retrofitting coming soon? We do not know when it is coming but it is coming. There is public transport investment that is more or less irrelevant to those of us who live in rural constituencies. There is investment in walking. I cannot even get a footpath in a local town in my constituency extended so that older people living on the edge of the town can walk in safely on a main road, yet the Government is talking about walking. It is utterly irrelevant and it does not hit the nail on the head in the context of the issue that is being raised here.

Recent ESRI reports have shown that carbon tax increases have an impact on low-income households and retrofitting is not enough for them right now because it does not work for the people who are cold in their homes today. Nothing the Minister of State has said here will help. What Sinn Féin is saying is that the Government should not go ahead with the carbon tax increase on 1 May because to do so would add to what is already a really difficult situation.

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