Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

My place is down to being first on the speaking list regardless of my gender. Tá áthas orm go bhfuil an deis agam labhairt sa díospóireacht seo. I will use my time to focus on some environmental aspects of the budget.

The big-ticket item is retrofitting. It was rightly pointed out that the Government has not allocated as much to retrofitting as Sinn Féin did in its alternative budget. We would invest €503 million in retrofits in 2023. That is €153 million more than the Government's 2022 allocation and far in excess of its 2023 capital allocation. More important, it is about how the money is spent, and budgets are all about choices. We would have spent that money in a fairer and more efficient way. I recognise it was said that the SEAI is great at getting back to people. It is great at getting back to people to tell them that they will not get a retrofit for years. My father is waiting four years at this stage to get a retrofit done on his house.

Unfortunately, there was no proposal in the budget to fix the broken retrofitting system. While the Government gives ever greater amounts to those who can afford the large upfront payments, more people continue to be locked out. Sinn Féin has proposed a radical overhaul of the broken system. We would abolish the Government’s national home energy upgrade scheme and establish a new tiered retrofit scheme. We would replace the Government’s better energy warmer homes scheme with a new retrofit scheme for low- and middle-income households. We would also put a cap on households with an income of €130,000 or more receiving support because they do not need a State handout to afford to retrofit their home.

On solid fuel, people have been browbeaten over turf but no alternatives have been provided for them. We know that 10% of households rely on solid fuels mainly in rural areas, and they tend to be the poorest, coldest and most carbon-intensive homes. Sinn Féin would establish a new retrofit scheme for solid fuel homes, targeted at low- and middle-income households. This is typical of the Green Party approach that we have come to expect. There is plenty of stick and very little carrot when it comes to helping people transition to a decarbonised future. Instead, Sinn Féin would take a targeted, plan-led and area-based approach based on need rather than ability to pay.

We would also provide a 50% increase in funding for local authority housing retrofits, which would again protect those most at risk of poverty, fuel poverty and the impact of the rising cost of energy. The Government announced the provision of €2 million compared with Sinn Féin’s €42 million for social housing retrofits. The Government’s climate watchdog, the Climate Change Advisory Council, CCAC, called on the Cabinet to reverse its policy, which excludes hundreds of thousands of homes from attic and wall insulation, because they require up-front payments. Sinn Féin would heed the CCAC’s call and make sure the payments are made quickly and in advance of works. We are in a time of crisis. The money needs to get out as quickly as possible and contractors need to be put to work in the households that are in most need.

We know families want the opportunity to put solar panels on their roofs and we would provide grants for that. Unlike the Government’s approach, which provides the same grant for all households, our scheme would provide different levels of funding, ranging from 100% to 10% depending on household income. We would introduce targeted measures based on fairness. We would also provide funding for solar panels for schools, and we have the legislation ready to go to alleviate the planning issues.

As to a windfall tax, we accept the surge in energy prices has been turbocharged by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, but it is not all down to the war. We cannot ignore Government failures that have led to the price shock now facing households. Our wholesale energy market is broken. I raised this issue in December 2020 when I called for reform of the wholesale energy market. The Government objected at every stage to reforming the market. We now see electricity generators making windfall revenues and profits on the back of a surge in gas prices, even when most of the energy is coming from renewables. It is an outrage that budget 2023 contained nothing on a windfall tax. Despite all the bluster that we heard from Government representatives on the airwaves in recent weeks, they now seem to want to wait for the EU to make the move to take on price gouging rather than do it themselves.

I fear the energy rebate will not work. We have called for a cap on electricity bills that would give people certainty going into the winter.The credit provided will quickly be overtaken by price increases and hard-pressed families will still be left worrying. Many people are turning back to solid fuel stoves. If the Minister of State was listening to "Today with Claire Byrne", he would have heard that elderly people are buying Superser heaters. People are reopening their fires because they are terrified of the energy bills that are coming. That is why a price cap gives people the certainty that they can get through this winter and afford to pay their bills.

Sinn Féin disagrees with the energy credit. I have one request of the Minister of State in that regard. The Traveller community was left out of the previous energy credit. The credit was not received on many halting sites. I was on a radio show the other night with a colleague from Fine Gael who admitted this, but said there was nothing that could be done where there was a single meter point reference number, MPRN. The energy credit was €20 million underspent in the last budget. We need a commitment that the Traveller community will not be excluded from the energy credits in this budget.