Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, I was in my local butcher's shop where the conversation was not about Kerry's win over Armagh or where the Ministers were on holidays, but about the struggle that the people who were buying their meat at the counter were dealing with every day. I spoke to the owner of the shop today. A drum of oil is up 23%, the price of chicken has doubled, the price of lamb is up 50% and the prices of breading, packaging and butter are up 30%. We are not here to speak about prices in the butcher's shop, but one of the main factors in all of this is the increase in energy prices.

Kerry is a county that has been heavily affected by the rise in fuel costs, which will undoubtedly continue to increase. There does not seem to be any end in sight. Obviously, the invasion of Ukraine has not helped, but inflation across the board has been a long time coming as a result of policies dating back over a decade and fully endorsed and pursued by members of this Government. In 2013, we in Sinn Féin called on the then Government not to sell Bord Gáis to Centrica for the knock-down price of €129 million. In the past three years, Centrica's profits from Bord Gáis have been €50 million, €33.5 million and €55 million, so that was not a bad price at which to get Bord Gáis. My county has a great degree of peripherality, a poor public transport network and many isolated and rural areas. We are even more affected by the increase in energy prices as a result of the Government's policies.

During Leaders' Questions today, the Government stated that it could not control what was happening on the world stage. It cannot, but it can react to it. I call on the Minister of State to take steps to react to it and make the burden easier for the people who are standing at the butcher's counter and who were going to buy three breasts of chicken but left the shop with only one because they could not afford the second and third. This is the type of crisis we are hearing about. I could list all of the various increases - Bord Gáis, coal and so on - but this is what we have come down to, namely, people eating less than they normally would and being unable to budget up to the end of the week.

This is what they are stuck with as a result of this Government not reacting and of the policies of Governments over the past decade.

The motion calls for a cost of living cash payment, a reduction in excise duty on petrol and diesel, a derogation to reduce VAT, the extension of the fuel allowance - I understand people on community employment schemes who are trying to get work cannot get it in a lump sum to pay their fuel costs so I want the Minister to try to deal with that as well, and a discretionary fund of €15 million to assist those households.

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