Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome these proposals tonight in so far as they go but the problem, of course, is that they do not go far enough. Given the struggles that so many families are encountering at the moment in relation to energy prices, one has to ask why the Government cannot go any further. Over the last few months the Government has been saying consistently that it could do nothing about VAT but then there was something it could do. We must ask whether it is possible for the Government to go any further than it is going currently. If not, what is the Government doing about that at European level? What case is being made by the Government? Who is actually leading on that? It seems that an opting out approach has been taken by the Government. We were hearing for many weeks from the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and others that their hands were tied and there was nothing they could do but that turned out not to be the case at all.

There is something shocking, if not immoral, about the fact that the Government has been profiteering from the soaring energy prices. The more prices went up, the more the Government took in through VAT but that should not have been tolerated. At the very minimum, it should have reinvested the additional receipts from VAT into direct supports for families but it chose not to do that. I accept that circumstances in recent weeks and months have been beyond the control of the Government in terms of the impact on energy prices of what is happening in Ukraine. However, by the middle of last year the trend was quite clear in relation to energy prices, the kind of pressure they were putting on people and the fact that they were the main driver in the overall increase in the cost of living. The Government had opportunities in the budget in to take measures to alleviate that pressure on low-income families but it chose not to do that. The Government was advised by the ESRI and the Central Bank that in the very difficult circumstances which the country is going through at the moment, any expenditure or investment should be targeted but the Government chose not to target the bulk of the funding that it made available. The electricity subsidy illustrates the Government's scatter-gun approach, with €200 or more going to lots of people who did not need it and who did not even notice that additional money going into their bank accounts. The Government missed an opportunity to do something of consequence for those people that were hardest hit and the same can be said for a number of other measures taken in the budget, including the €5 increase in social welfare payments. People in receipt of social welfare needed a minimum of €10 just to stand still, not to mind what has been happening since then. On the fuel allowance, nothing was done in the budget or since then to assist low-income working families, those in receipt of the working family payment. The Government could have easily targeted money in that direction. It could have been done very simply. It was not complex at all and could have been done urgently and been targeted at those families most in need.

The situation in relation to the high cost of living and particularly energy costs has highlighted a particular structural problem in the Irish economy.

8 o’clock

This is the problem of low incomes, whether people are on welfare or working on low pay. This has been exposed very starkly as a result of the events in recent months. The Minister of State has an opportunity to do something to address this problem where it is most acutely felt among families on low incomes but he has chosen not to do so and to take a typical Fine Gael approach of spreading it all very thinly. It is a missed opportunity. It is regrettable that these measures on VAT are happening at this point. It is far too little too late. The Government could have acted sooner. Unfortunately, many thousands of families are taking the brunt of it now. They are suffering very deeply as a result of this inaction.

See this speech in context