Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

Met Éireann issued a cold weather warning this morning. Temperatures are set to plunge to -3° with frost, ice and dangerous conditions expected over the coming days. People are anxious. People are preparing. People are scared because they simply cannot afford another winter like the last one.

One communication to my office this morning was from a person who wrote:

We got our autumn gas bill. It was €275. The heating had barely been on. We paid just under €20 in VAT, €20 in carbon tax and a standing charge of around the same, all totaling €59.80. The next gas bill will be double that as the weather has changed. This is nearly impossible for us. It looks like we will freeze again this year. It is just survival now.

When people are describing their lives as "survival", something is deeply wrong. However, this is the reality so many are living in and this is the Ireland of 2025. Yet, the Government has scrapped the energy credits just as people's bills are rising again. It leaves families to face the cold entirely on their own at the harshest time of the year. Yesterday, St. Vincent de Paul said it expects a quarter of a million calls for help this year. That is a quarter of a million people and families turning to charity because they cannot make ends meet. This tells us how serious, how widespread and how devastating this hardship has become.

Across the board, everything is getting dearer. Rents are through the roof as is the weekly food shop. Parents are budgeting down to the last euro. People feel it every time they go to the supermarket or to the petrol station and every time they try to pay a bill. Life is getting harder, not easier.

This is the point: the biggest hit of all is one the Government chose to impose. By increasing student fees by €500, it pushed up the cost of education more than anything else this year. For families with students, this is a massive extra burden. It is the single steepest rise in any household cost and the Government caused it. Of course, it also hiked up fuel costs, petrol, diesel and home heating oil.

D’eisigh Met Éireann rabhadh aimsire fuaire ar maidin. Tá an teocht le titim go dtí -3° le sioc agus leac oighir agus táthar ag súil le cúinsí contúirteacha sna laethanta amach romhainn. Tá imní ar dhaoine mar tá a fhios acu nach féidir leo teacht slán ar gheimhreadh eile cosúil leis an gceann deireanach a bhí againn. Bhain an Rialtas na creidiúintí fuinnimh uathu, ach tá siad ag teastáil ó dhaoine anois láithreach. Caithfidh an Rialtas an cinneadh sin a mhalartú.

The Government, of course, also removed the energy credits. These things did not just happen. These are deliberate decisions taken knowing full well the pressure families were already under. I have raised the issue of the energy companies and their exorbitant prices time and again in this Chamber. I warned repeatedly but the Government failed to appreciate the scale of what is happening out there. I have to continue raising these points because, as the weather gets colder, the hardship increases and more people are pushed to the brink. I have asked the Government before to tackle the energy companies and get them to end their rip-off.

However, in the here and now, people need help from the Government. The easiest, most direct and immediate way to do this is to restore the energy credits. I ask again, and I ask plainly: will the Government please restore the energy credits or is it prepared to allow families to struggle through winter under its policies?

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