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

I join in welcoming and congratulating our boxing heroes, Amy, Dearbhla and Evelyn. Boxing has brought great honour to Irish sport throughout the decades and continues to do so. We pay tribute to the coaching fraternity and our boxing community. Well done to Jim O'Neill and his team. It is fantastic the degree to which young people are encouraged and nurtured through the great sport of boxing.

Like everyone in this House, we are deeply concerned about the enormous cost pressures and impact of the current inflationary cycle on people, households and workers. I make it very clear that the Government and I are absolutely determined to deal comprehensively with this. Putin has waged a war first and foremost on the people of Ukraine through ongoing murder and terror, as witnessed in yesterday's appalling and inhumane bombing of a shopping centre with 18 innocent civilians killed. In parallel with this, Putin has deliberately and premeditatedly created an energy war, an energy crisis, through withholding supplies, causing a massive increase in the price of energy across Europe and the world. Likewise, on migration, he is creating the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War through the terror of bombing towns and villages, forcing Ukrainians to flee their lands, with the internal displacement of about 7 million people. In addition, through the weaponisation of food, he is creating a famine to add to the challenges Africa is already experiencing. That is the context and background; it is a very real one. At the meeting of the Council of the European Union last week, very real concerns were raised about what the winter will bring if gas is cut off fully by Russia from the rest of Europe, particularly the major states that use Russian gas. That is now a very real prospect. That has already happened in quite a number of states.

This is not something we can chase month by month. There has to be a comprehensive response that gets us through the entirety of next winter in particular. It is a response that has to take on board pay. There have been discussions between public service unions and the Government. There have been settlements in the private sector in the past while and those will continue. In relation to that, tax has to be dealt with. The expenditure profile of every Department has to be dealt with, which is very much linked to the cost-of-living issue, in the context of issues such as childcare and health care costs and so forth. The idea of doing something in an isolated silo way is just not the correct response. It has to embrace pay, expenditure, tax and a specific cost-of-living package that would apply in this calendar year to meet the challenges people face.

It is wrong to say, as the Sinn Féin motion states, that the Government has done nothing or to condemn what the Government has done. The Government has increased the fuel allowance, for example, by 55% or €404. That is a measure we have already introduced.

About €2.4 billion in measures have been allocated to the cost-of-living issue. The Government cut taxes and increased social welfare rates in the budget last October. Since then, through measures in February and beyond, we have also reduced excise duty on petrol, diesel and green diesel, saving motorists between €9 and €12 each time they fill their tanks. We have reduced VAT on gas and electricity bills from 13.5% to 9%. We have also given a €200 energy credit to every single household across the country. We have cut the annual public service obligation, PSO, levy from €52 to minus €75. We have launched a national retrofitting scheme. We have introduced new grant rates that will cover about 80% of the typical cost of attic and wall insulation. We have put caps on school transport fees for families. We have cut public transport fares by 20%, with an additional 50% cut in fares for young people. We have lowered the threshold for the drugs payment scheme.

It is therefore just not fair or balanced to say the Government has done nothing. What we need is a comprehensive package, which we are working on and which we will deliver for people to alleviate the undoubted pressures that are on people at the moment and that will be there right throughout the winter.

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