Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Nearly a year ago, Vladimir Putin sent his tanks into Kyiv and set the world ablaze by putting energy prices through the roof. They had already risen because he had been turning off the tap deliberately in advance and using energy as a weapon of war. The inflation that resulted and the cost-of-living crisis that came from that was unprecedented, probably since the early 1970s and the oil-price crisis. Any independent economic analysis of any credit or note would assess that this Government's response in the last year protected our people. It did not adopt some of the populist politics that the Tories and others here argued for, which would undermine the economic credibility of the State and its ability to protect the people. What we were able to do this by reducing excise duty, VAT, public transport fares and the cost of childcare, by providing each household with €800 upfront credit payments, by increasing social welfare payments both in once-off and permanent rises in payments, by introducing restrictions and moratoriums on cutting off energy supply and other measures. I could go on. There was a whole range of measures that the ESRI and others have analysed and said that we got it right and that we have protected the most vulnerable in particular in this incredible and unprecedented time. We do not know what will happen in the coming year. Please God, that war will come to an end. We have said clearly that we will continue to protect our people but we should not go down the route of populist solutions where we say we will never raise another tax and we will not reverse any of the VAT cuts. In the end that would lead us to a position where our economy would not be sound and we would not be able to protect and provide for our people into the future. In that populist route lies real danger.

There is a responsibility on Government to ensure the basic economic protection of the State's finances so that we can provide the measures when we needs them. We did it during the Covid pandemic and we unwound the measures in a way that worked. That is what we will do again this spring and what we will need to do.

We will be attentive if circumstances change. We will keep an eye on international prices. We must keep an eye on what the economy is doing, on employment and on people's welfare. I refer to false simple promises that we would never reverse a single measure and that we would not do what we did during Covid, namely, bring in big supports and appropriately withdraw them, although not off a cliff edge, to which we are all committed and on which we are all agreed. We would not do this on the never-never, where it is put off and at every local election and general election to come, we would say we will not do it now because it will be politically unpopular. That reckless way would really endanger our people and the protection of our people which is what we want to do.

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