Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

What is not said is that the Government agreed at an EU level to a multi-annual financial framework that actually fleeced farmers. Whatever funding is reimbursed through the carbon tax, and I contend it is very little, does not make up for the shortfall. We do not have a good rural environment protection scheme, REPS, like we had in the past. We have an agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, that farmers find very difficult to enter and, if they do get in, find it very difficult to receive payments. The Tánaiste should not give us the folly that the carbon tax pays for the fuel allowance and other supports. Those supports should and could be in place without increasing the carbon tax this year. The carbon tax is supposed to be an environmental tax but it does not work because the alternatives are not there.

I say categorically that no person who represents a constituency, knowing their constituents are finding it very difficult to meet the cost of groceries, energy and virtually every single thing, on the back of a budget from which those people who are struggling got no support, can stand over the fact those working families not on social welfare and who are not mega-wealthy developers got nothing-----

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