Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Not for the first time but once again, the Taoiseach is totally and utterly wrong in his response here. Our proposal is about helping families. It is about providing certainty so they can get through what will be very difficult winter months. Our proposals are time limited. Interventions at European level are, of course, necessary and welcome, but they should not be used again as an excuse for the Government to delay and dither and sit on its hands. In fact, our proposal would work in tandem with the proposed EU measures. Our proposals are similar to price certainty measures that have been introduced elsewhere, for example, in France and Romania. Other emergency measures, as the Taoiseach knows, have been introduced in Spain, Portugal and Italy.

The only blank cheque in question here is the one the Taoiseach is asking families to give to energy companies. His failure to act in the way I have described will allow prices to continue to rise. One thing is absolutely certain: families cannot cope with that and they are depending on the Taoiseach to act definitively. I will ask the Taoiseach again to move to cut electricity bills back to pre-crisis levels and to cap them at that level for the winter months until the end of February. That is what is required here.

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