Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)

I really like numbers. I look at numbers all the time. There are approximately 750,000 people who are about to go on auto-enrolment in January, approximately 1.5 million recipients of social protection payments and zero offshore wind farms in this country that are operational. A magic number I just discovered is minus €250. The reason I really like numbers is that they often bring clarity. Politics is too often the opposite of mathematics. It is often too much about obscurity and opaqueness; telling people we are doing one thing and then the Government doing the other. Therefore, I thought I would run some numbers and seek some clarity. In the most recent budget, there were no energy credits like there were last year but there were increases to the fuel allowance, which I welcome. Yet, at the same time, the energy companies have put up their prices to €1,877 per year on average, according to the figures released from the Minister of State's Department that were covered in the Irish Independent.

I want to know where this leaves a typical pensioner, a typical person on disability allowance and a typical carer, who are all reliant on this fuel allowance increase. To be clear, more than 400,000 households are in receipt of the fuel allowance. This is approximately 25% of all households in this country. This is not a niche issue. It turns out that despite all the hot air from the Government and the weak efforts on fuel allowance, each of these people will be €250 worse off in the next 12 months than they were in the past 12 months. This means they will need to shut off their energy supply for a month next year or make ends meet and cut their budgets somewhere else. If they dip into the social welfare payments that were announced in the budget, it will mean they will spend nearly 50% of these budget increases on energy over the next year. This is despite the supposed increase in fuel allowance, which it turns out does not make a dent in these massive increased bills. They will still be €250 worse off.

What is the Government's recommendation to this quarter of all households, to the grandmother, the disabled person or the carer in Kanturk? Should they shut off the heating for two months or spend less on Christmas presents this year? Should they go cold or should they go hungry? Should they believe the Government's spin or should they check their bank accounts? They will be €250 worse off. It is just maths and the Government is failing at it. Its numbers do not add up.

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