Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I do not know if the Minister of State really believes what he says and that the Government has done enough. Let me put it like this: the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council told the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach that inflation has benefitted the tax revenues of the State. Inflation and growth have given a bonanza of €2 billion, yet since the start of the year what the Government has introduced has given €1 billion back, so there is space. That is what IFAC is telling the Minister. There is space to do more.

The Minister of State mentioned the €200 credit for every household and said that everybody should have got it. It was so poorly designed that we have situations where people living in Wexford, for example, social housing tenants, only received €25 because the credit was split between those who share meters. The Government has not provided the support and protection that is needed. The OECD called the Government out and said it provided limited protection to poorer households, so it is allowing them to wither on the vine. What is needed is an emergency budget, an increase in social welfare rates in response to inflation, an increase in the minimum wage, the introduction of cost-of-living cash payments to lower and middle- income households, the removal of excise on the cost of home heating oil, the slashing of childcare fees, to put a month's rent back into renters' pockets and ban rent increases. That is what is needed. Otherwise, what the Government is doing, in my view, is shameful.

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