Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to acknowledge that everyone in government is very much seized and very much aware of the cost-of-living crisis, how it is impacting on people's household bills and many people having to make difficult decisions about what they spend their money on over the course of the next few weeks. We see it at the pumps, we see it in our utility bills and, increasingly, we are seeing it feeding through to other bills, such as groceries.

The Government has acted already. I will not go through the list of things that we have done. It is long, as the Deputy knows. The Government will act again, into the winter and, indeed, into next year. We will be able to help people in many different ways, for example, pay increases. We have the increase in the national minimum wage. We have a public sector pay deal going through at present. We will be able to reduce income taxes in the budget. We will be able to increase the pension and other welfare payments and also we will be able to take specific action to help people with their energy bills. All of that will be ready for the package that is announced on budget day.

In relation to a windfall tax, it is our intention as a government or at least we are minded at this point to introduce a windfall tax. We need to work out the details of that but, certainly, in principle, the Government has agreed that that is something that we will pursue and it will form part of the budget. What we have to work out is how it will apply and how it will work and that is not straightforward. However, as it would apply to profits made this year, it would be backdated to the beginning of the energy crisis earlier this year because profits are taxed on an annual basis. It would, of course, apply to profits made this year hitherto. If that is what the Deputy means by "backdated", the answer is "Yes".

Quite frankly, when it comes to the EU proposals, I cannot explain them for the Deputy or interpret them. They are not Government proposals. They are proposals of the European Commission. They are not yet agreed and, quite frankly, they are not entirely clear. We need to figure them out, ideally, before budget day, because what is done at European level will impact on what we want to do here. However, the principle is there that there will be a windfall tax and we will use the proceeds from that windfall tax to help reduce the cost of energy for families and businesses.

As a footnote, the Deputy mentioned the ESRI energy poverty index. Of course, the Deputy is correct in what she says but it is important to point out that the way the ESRI calculates energy poverty is essentially anyone who spends more than 10% of his or her disposable income on energy. Quite frankly, at present, that is probably most people in the country. It is a different index to consistent poverty or deprivation, which are different things. Perhaps that particular index does not reflect the reality of the new world that we are going into which probably is one of higher energy costs.

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