Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Bill will, of course, make the required changes that were identified as a response to the cost-of-living crisis. My colleague, Deputy Doherty, has mentioned this. We had heard time and time again that things could not be done but we kept raising them. I welcome that we are having this discussion. The Bill also includes provisions to amend the TBESS. I will speak to these issues as well as to others that are timely and necessary.

The first issue I will address is excise duty and VAT. Households are continuing to struggle with sky-high energy bills. I constantly have people in my clinic, as does every other Member in this Chamber, who are struggling with energy bills. I have had renters in to me who live in a house that has been separated into flats, which means the energy credit had to be split several ways between the various renters occupying the property. Suffice it to say it did not go very far.

Section 2 deals with the mineral oil tax and section 3 deals with VAT. Section 2 extends the reduced rates of excise duty applying to petrol and diesel but with staggered increases. I will not run through the timeline of different rate increases but I will flag that the increases will be in excess of the reduction the Minister previously brought in. This is due to the coming increase in the carbon tax. We had urged him to extend this reduction but that has clearly fallen on deaf ears. Under section 3, he has extended the reduced rate of VAT for electricity, gas and for the hospitality and tourism sectors. That would keep the lower VAT rate of 9%, reduced from 13.5%, in place until 31 October. While the lower rate is preferable to the higher rate, in the grand scheme of things it needs to be recognised that over the past two years, the cost of electricity and gas has more than doubled.

Coupled with rising rents, rising food costs and other service cost inflation, it is hardly surprising that many people feel their general quality of life is deteriorating. According to Department of Finance figures, the VAT reduction will reduce gas prices for households only by approximately €26 from March to October. This works out at only €3.25 per month. In this day and age, €3.25 in Dublin would not even cover the cost of a cup of coffee in most places. The coming carbon tax increase will also increase the price of gas by €17. The increase in carbon tax due on home heating oil and gas in May will also offset the minor reduction this measure was designed to achieve. We had urged the Minister to extend the reduction of the rates of excise on petrol and diesel beyond February. It is a missed opportunity as it could have counteracted the carbon tax increases

Section 5 deals with the TBESS and the various modifications being made to it. First, there is the extension of the scheme itself, which will be extended beyond the 30 April deadline to 31 May, with the potential to extend it again. It will reduce the energy costs threshold for the scheme and will increase the level of relief from 40% to 50% of the eligible costs, subject to the monthly limits provided for under the scheme. People welcome these changes but I am really disappointed that a scheme has yet to be established for those businesses that rely on oil and LPG. This issue comes up continually with me in County Galway because many people rely on them. I have been raising this for quite some time with the Minister and with other relevant Ministers. In his opening statement, the Minister said that something is going to come and something is going to happen, but the reality is that businesses have closed as a result. I am dealing with businesses that have to remain closed for part of the week or several days of the week. This does not only impact on the services they provide; this also impacts the entire rural community because it impacts on employment and on the general services in the area. The Minister said that he is looking at it and that it has been flagged to be looked at for some time now, but we need action on it now or it will just continue to impact on these businesses that will be forced into closure as a result. We can see the number of businesses that have been closed as a result.

We are discussing this because we know that people are struggling as a result of the cost-of-living crisis. We have been clear in our critique of the Government's response to this. Earlier I referred to the deterioration in people's quality of life as a result of the impact of increases in costs. One of those costs is something that is going to be debated again later this evening, which is the impact of the cost of housing and the precarious nature of the cost of housing. This is really impacting people's lives. We hear about accidental landlords but we do not hear enough about accidental tenants. This is very strange. Let us consider the number of accidental tenants, those people in my age group, who want to buy a home and who are simply not able to do that. A large number of people do not want to rent but they have no other choice. As a result, they are stuck on the rental hamster wheel and are constantly required to run faster and faster. They are constantly living in fear that they might receive a notice to quit and they will be unable to find somewhere else that is affordable, or even find anything at all. Now the Minister will get rid of the eviction ban before he has even put in place measures that he feels will help. Given the failure of all the schemes I have seen up to this point, I am not hopeful in any way, shape or form. We know, and the Minister has said that he sees it, that the number of homeless people will increase as a result. I raise this because all of this is linked. Even before we had the invasion of Ukraine and even before we experience the huge increase in the rate of inflation, the cost-of-living crisis in the State was horrendous because we had some the highest rents in Europe and because people did not have security of tenure in their homes It is only getting worse. The Minister is about to create what Fr. Peter McVerry has described as a social "catastrophe". That is on this Government's head with the decision it will make later tonight and tomorrow. I am really thrown by that and by this Government.

The Government is ready and willing to see people thrown out on the streets, which we know is going to happen. In Galway city and county, for example, there is not enough emergency accommodation to actually deal with people who will be in that position. There is simply no room for people at this point. We know how much people are struggling. A recent report from Barnardos confirmed that people are struggling to put food on the table for their children. People do not have any buffer but even if they did have a financial buffer, at this point there is literally nowhere to go. What do they do? We have not had a response from Government on that at all. I really am shocked in relation to this.

The reality is that this is the result of policy over a number of years. We saw it when Fine Gael welcomed the vulture funds to Ireland. We saw it when huge numbers of local authority staff were laid off, which had a serious knock-on impact that we are still seeing in the context of housing maintenance across our housing stock. We saw tax break after tax break being introduced for a whole variety of investment fund-type vehicles. The Government has presided over property prices going back above Celtic tiger levels and rents reaching the highest point ever. Now we are hearing about difficulties in the banking sector and I have to say I have an awful sense that we have come full circle here.

I am glad the Minister listened to us in the sense that he felt that something needed to be done. I did fear that nothing would be done. That said, there are serious issues here and the Minister has both the power and the opportunity to help people. He knows, having worked with me previously, that there are times when I agree with him and times when I do not agree with him but see his point of view. On this issue, however, I just do not get it. I really hope the Minister changes his mind.

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