Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach and welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion. The Opposition will put forward its case for an emergency budget. The Government will respond when it has the opportunity to do so. The Opposition will put forward its case for an emergency budget. The Government will respond that there is no need for one and that it will address these issues in October. The reality is that there are practical steps that can be taken today which would make a real difference to families who are struggling.

The Minister and I sat down around the table when we were negotiating Project Ireland 2040. At that time, we set a target of retrofitting 45,000 homes from 2021 onwards. As the Minister knows, that target was watered down this year to just 22,000 homes, of which 4,500 house people on social welfare. We will be very lucky if the very first of those grants announced to such fanfare earlier in the year is paid by the end of September when the fuel allowance kicks in.

We can increase the fuel allowance and social welfare rates but the one long-term measure that can address the challenges our people face in respect of energy bills and the cost of heating their homes is to reduce the cost of heating homes. The practical way to do that is through retrofitting. That programme of retrofitting should have been ramped up at this stage. Covid-19 is not he reason it has not been ramped up. There is now a need to prioritise retrofitting homes.

One of the other issues that people are facing is the spiralling cost of accommodation, that is, if they are lucky enough to be able to secure a property to rent. This has been a very serious issue in our cities for a long period. In the past five days, I have had three professionals come to my constituency office looking for accommodation to rent in Roscommon town. It cannot be got at any price. These are three professionals working in the town.

They cannot source accommodation in the town or its hinterland. What is absolutely criminal is that, according to the data the CSO announced in recent days, we have 4,000 vacant homes in County Roscommon. We have more than 100,000 vacant houses throughout the country in the middle of a housing emergency.

Something that could help to reduce the cost of housing and provide accommodation for people would be to release these homes. One way that could help do this is to alter the conditions of the repair and lease scheme of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. This is the scheme whereby a local authority can take over private accommodation from a landlord, carry out the repairs that need to be made to the house and lease it out for five years. To acquire these properties, the local authority must show a housing need in the community. The difficulty, as the Minister knows well, is that there has not been a tradition of local authority housing in areas such as the small villages we have in County Roscommon. People do not express a preference to reside there. In fact, the villages are not even listed on the council's housing application form. Even though there is vacant housing and there is a huge demand for housing, these houses cannot come under the repair and lease scheme. A small alteration to the terms and conditions of the scheme regarding the housing needs test would help to release some of the properties.

I have no doubt there are people on the social housing list who would take that accommodation. If they are not willing to take it, I can tell the Minister there are many other people, such as the three professionals I spoke to and many people in this city, who would relocate to rural Ireland if they had the opportunity of a fixed rent over a five-year period. The local authorities would not be stuck with these properties. We need a bit of initiative to try to release some of them into the housing market where they are urgently needed.

I want to speak about a number of pointless charges in the system that need to be removed. The first is the public service obligation levy on electricity customers. Every month through the PSO the State collects €4.88 from every electricity customer without any need for the money at present. In fact, the State is taking in the money at present and plans to give it back to people next October. Surely it would make far more sense to suspend the collection of the PSO today and give people some relief rather than gathering the money and bringing forward legislation to try to give back some of it later in the year. Give people a break today.

While I am on the issue of legislation, with regard to the Bill that will come before the House tomorrow, the Minister will pony up the capital cost up-front to allow EirGrid to buy the generating capacity for 450 MW of electricity. However, ultimately it will be every electricity customer in the country who will pay for it. The Minister and I know from the engagement we have had previously that much of the 450 MW of electricity we have to acquire is because of the huge demand placed on our electricity network by data centres. I have told the Minister in the past that I believe it is immoral that electricity customers and families struggling to pay electricity bills should be subsidising the cost of green electricity going into data centres and subsidising the cost of transporting electricity from the west coast of Ireland to the data centres in Dublin. These companies should pay the costs themselves instead of passing them back to families who are struggling to pay their electricity bills. I urge the Minister to deal with this issue today.

I know the Minister and I will disagree on the next pointless charge I will discuss, which is the carbon tax. At present it costs motorists approximately 13 cent a litre when VAT is included. This has a disproportionate impact on families living in rural areas and communities who do not have the availability of public transport and cannot get the 20% relief the Government is providing on public transport in urban areas. As I have said to the Minister previously, we need a form of carbon tax that is fluid so that when the price of oil goes up, the carbon tax take comes down, and when the price of oil comes down, the carbon tax take goes up so that we have a consistent incremental increase in the price of fossil fuels and oil between now and 2030 rather than this see-saw approach that will do nothing to motivate people to move in the long term to more sustainable options.

The Minister will come back and argue with me that the money is needed to carry out the retrofitting I have spoken about. We are now getting in substantially more money in VAT from fossil fuels, petrol, diesel and home heating fuels than we had projected in the budget last year. This money could be used to cross-subsidise the reduction in carbon tax take if there was relief on it. The one thing an alteration in carbon tax would do tomorrow morning is that it would disproportionately benefit families in rural areas. The Minister knows what the ESRI has said, which is that families in rural communities are being disproportionately impacted by the increase in the cost of fuels and the increases throughout the economy that we are all experiencing at present.

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