Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The excise duty measures have been extended to budget day already. We fully accept the pressures that are on people. Since October we have brought in €2.4 billion worth of measures that, in many respects, are targeted at healthcare, education, fuel and transport costs, including reducing prices in public transport. Deputy McDonald also called for an emergency budget but I am not sure that Deputies are really talking about an emergency budget; they are just talking about an emergency expenditure programme if we are honest. A budget has pluses and minuses and it has revenue generation. I will not go into the detail of that but it seems to me that every month since this crisis - which is a serious crisis and I can understand why - people want €1 billion to be spent every month. No sooner had we announced the last €1 billion and a bit than the demand was for more the following month. I have no doubt that if something was announced next week, before a month was out Deputies and parties would be looking for another package. That is the nature of it.

We all agree that the people are under enormous pressure because of what is happening globally and within Europe. The Deputy was right when she said it could get worse and it will get worse. That is why we need to make sure that what we do is well thought through, does not add unnecessarily to inflation or the inflationary cycle, and is targeted and I agree that it should be targeted. The ESRI report is useful in that respect. It should also be sustainable over a longer period of time. It should not be the case that as soon as we do the budget, we have to do something the following month and the following month again if we can avoid that.

We need to create stability and to underpin our jobs and the other positive sides of Irish productivity and manufacturing that are evident at the moment. Much of that depends on the global situation, which we are worried about. Markets in other parts of Europe are under pressure. We see that from reports and predictions coming in. The biggest fear is prolonged stagflation. One of the biggest barriers against poverty is getting a job. Thankfully in this country, because of the way we managed the economy for the last two years and supported jobs and enterprises through the pandemic, we enabled many of them to come back much more quickly than might have been anticipated and to survive, with the result that we have record levels of employment. That is a strength going into the end of the year. We have revenue coming in also but towards the tail end of the year, there is much uncertainty. Because of that, we need to be cautious and make sure we get it right. The Deputy should be in no doubt that we want to alleviate the pressures and to do it in a comprehensive way that will affect average people in a good way for a sustained period.

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