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

I thank all the Senators who contributed to what has been a very useful and interesting debate. I very much appreciate the thought and time they have given to their contributions. I will not address every matter raised but I will try to cover as many as I can.

I will start with Senator Boyhan, as some of the points he raised were also mentioned by a number of other people. There is the question of everybody getting this credit. We must look at this and recognise that this is not the only measure that the Government is applying to address energy poverty. The primary means or mechanism for doing this is the budget. The measure before us is unusual or exceptional and I do not believe it will be repeated. We are in unprecedented times. The majority of the measures to address energy poverty were contained in the budget.

What Senator Boyhan said is true because we have been watching these gas prices rise for almost a year now with increasing concern. The increases arise because of factors that include a rise in demand in Asia and very low stocks in Europe. Even last summer there was a very low incidence of wind across north-west Europe, leading to gas demand increasing. The increasing price of carbon shut coal plants, leading to more gas plants being used. There is an incredibly complex range of factors that caused the particular spike in gas prices at the centre of this energy price spike that we have seen. This is why the Government in its budget introduced significant measures for social welfare, including increases in household allowances, the qualified child allowance, the working family payments and the fuel allowance.

It recognised that we must target and try to prevent fuel poverty in everything we do. I attended the European Council of energy ministers and environment ministers in the autumn and it was indicated that we had to go further across the board in countries across Europe. This was because we were not seeing prices come down as quickly as we expected them to. We still expect them to come down, although again not as quickly as expected. The European Commission's expectations for inflation in our country next year will be between 2% or 3%, I believe. The expectation is that inflation in gas prices will come down, although not as quickly as we would like. The rate is far higher than historical precedent suggests. The European Commission indicated in the autumn that we should start looking at other measures for further support.

Included in that toolbox were direct payments. We might have looked at mechanisms including reducing VAT or taking from the emissions trading system, as mentioned by Senator Boyhan. With this measure we have taken from an underspend in the previous year and provisions from the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform in contingency funding in order to make a direct payment to everyone.If it is seen just in isolation people think we are looking after everyone in the same way. We are not. There is a range and sequence of other measures. Included in this is the money for retrofitting. There is €267 million from the Department and €85 million from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Senator Higgins and others said it is not targeted. It is targeted. The majority of money is targeted at those on low incomes. Out of the €267 million approximately €118 million-----