Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister's response is an incredibly disappointing and disingenuous one. The one point he made, with which I agree, is that he at least admitted the Government is not doing enough. We do not need the Minister to tell us that, because ordinary working families across the State know that. Nobody on these benches is telling the Government to do everything; we just want it to do more. The reason we ask the Government to do more is that every single day in our constituencies, as I am sure in the constituencies of the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, and the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Humphreys, working families and small businesses are urging them to do more. The Minister is a constituency politician, as is the Minister beside him. I know they talk to their constituents every day, as I do. They are telling us, collectively, in this House that more needs to be done. They are only too aware of the fact that it is their taxes that fund the public services or any additional temporary relief that the Government provides them with.

It is a bit rich for the Minister to talk about honesty when last week, when Sinn Féin first started to outline the types of measures that are in this motion today, we were told by the Government that it was not possible - that it was not legal - even though Deputies Kerrane, Doherty and McDonald outlined what was the case. In fact, probably the most dishonest contribution to this entire public debate has been a Fine Gael tweet which claimed there was no excise duty on home heating oil. Of course, the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, knows, because the officials in his own Department as well as Revenue confirmed tothejournal.ieFactCheck that it is not the case – carbon tax is a form of excise duty. The Minister knows, but at least tonight he is honest enough to make the argument that it is about cost and not legality.

The problem is that the measures taken to date, those that were outlined in the budget, which were not enough to deal with the rising cost of living at that stage, or the measures that were taken a week and a half ago, are not doing enough to constrain the rising cost of fuel. Until I hear a Government Minister on the other side accepting that and putting forward some other alternative, we will keep coming back again and again to make these proposals.

The Minister does himself no service repeating some of the questionable arguments that I have heard from the Government benches to date. I thought he was better than that. At least the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, was honest with us in his contribution last week. We implore the Minister not to listen to what we are saying, but to what the people he represents are saying and come back and do more because if he does not, people will suffer in homes, businesses and families and we will not be party to that.

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