Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I know the Ceann Comhairle has stepped out but I want to pay tribute to him for hosting President Zelenskyy earlier. He spoke passionately and emotively from the heart and he represented the views of the people of Ireland. I commend the Minister, who also spoke most eloquently. It was wonderful to hear him namecheck and quote some of the 21 previous speakers who had addressed the Houses. It put the momentum of today in context. I congratulate him on that.

On the business at hand, we are facing the perfect storm. On the one hand we are warned of impending environmental doom if we do not take decisive action and, on the other, we have hard-pressed families throughout the country creaking at the seams and desperately trying to make ends meet. While everybody in this Chamber is well insulated from the worst of the crisis, our communities are ravaged by a cost-of-living crisis. Some would have us choose between the environment and aiding these families in the deepest and darkest of financial hardship as we face into potential double digit inflation. I hasten to add that inflationary pressures will not abate and will ultimately wipe out any potential pay rises on a whim. It is possible and incumbent on us to tackle both challenges.

We cannot control the war in Ukraine or oil prices. We are a price taker, not an oil producer, and all these issues are beyond us but we must go to the kernel of the issue and make any and every effort to address the cost-of-living challenge. We can take real and meaningful actions to assist families who are struggling. We have heard many calls to pause the carbon tax but the impact of doing that will be minuscule. A reduction in VAT will assist and I commend An Taoiseach on his efforts at EU level in this regard. I also welcome the comments in recent days from him that he, the Cabinet and the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, are working towards a series of cost-of-living support measures that will hopefully be announced towards the end of the month. The only way to genuinely help families in this time of crisis is if we put money directly back into their pockets. We have already seen a significant Exchequer boost in VAT revenues as a result of soaring fuel costs. That money needs to be ring-fenced and put directly back into the pockets of those who have been worst affected. We have the means and mechanisms in place that will allow us to directly address these issues.

We have to further broaden the eligibility for the fuel allowance and we also need to allow departmental officials flexibility and discretion when it comes to awarding the payment. If people are €5 or €10 over the income threshold for the fuel allowance that should not preclude them from receiving it in this time of crisis because the reality is that a bale of briquettes costs €6 and €10 will not buy a half bag of coal. To be arguing with somebody over €5 or €10 when it comes to applying for the fuel allowance seems derisory and insulting in this case. We also need a once-off fuel allowance payment in the month of May. This will cushion people into the summer as they prepare for the worst excesses of what will have been a difficult winter. This should be a full payment of €914 because the average oil bill is in the region of €720 and average electricity bills are in the order of €500. There is also a compelling case to be made to extend the fuel allowance to family carers as the carer's payment is not a qualifying payment for the fuel allowance. In addition, it is estimated that one in five family carers is not in receipt of a carer's payment. It is important that we extend the eligibility of the fuel allowance to many of these households because they are the ones that have been most adversely affected by the cost of fuel and these are the families that needed the heat most over the hard winter months.

I refer to the hard-pressed middle income families who heretofore have seen no break, help or assistance apart from an electricity credit of €200 and whatever benefit they gleaned from the reduction in fuel excise duty. We have an immediate and ready solution that can address the issues for these people. We have a network of community welfare offices across the country and among those numbers we can count some of the hardest working, most efficient and most empathetic civil servants we have in this country. They have their fingers on the pulse and they can see first-hand the challenges and difficulties that families are facing on a daily basis.

We need to give these community welfare offices a once-off fund, derived from money ring-fenced from the windfall from VAT on fuel in recent months. We should allow hard-pressed middle income families to access that fund. That is the only way that we will address the crisis that families across the country are facing. We need to start putting money back into their pockets. These are real changes that will make a meaningful difference and will not be hoovered up by energy companies, as we have seen so far.

This is not a debate about them or us or about environmentalists versus climate sceptics. An Taoiseach put it most eloquently earlier this week when he said it is about safeguarding the future for our children and their children. It is also about safeguarding the people in our communities, who need us now more than ever. They are turning to us with voices of despair and anger. They are asking for us, as a Government and legislators, to do something meaningful and tangible, by putting money back into their pockets to take the pressure off them. I have outlined three or four tangible measures and solutions that could address the cost of living crisis and could directly affect more than 700,000 households throughout the country. At the same time, crucially, we can do this. We can make a real and meaningful difference to those households. At the same time, we can maintain momentum on the environmental challenge that looms large for the world.

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