Paul Murphy: Government diesel rebate favours hauliers

Thanks a lot, Gaeilleach. I think this resolution is very revealing about the government's approach. So we had earlier a resolution that introduced inadequate measures. Small cuts in excise on petrol and diesel, no price caps, no guarantee, no security for people into the future, nothing to ensure there's not profiteering, very time limited until the end of May, measures that literally could be wiped away by the end of the week. We could go back down to two euros and then go back up again by the end of the week. Something, but very, very inadequate. Nothing, effectively nothing, I mean an insult in terms of home heating oil, 20 euros on a thousand litres when the price has very close to doubled over the past number of weeks, really insulting to people and the kind of underlying thread when you listen to the ministers is like, ah sure, kind of, we're getting out of the bad weather, people will be grand and when they certainly won't be, they're struggling. So very minimal measures in terms of the general population. But then you hear there's resolution two, don't worry the resolution two is a targeted measure, it's a measure that unlike the ones that voted on earlier that come in tonight and go just until the end of May, oh this one, it's backdated to January 1st and it goes all the way to the end of June, fantastic you think, this must be for the disabled people, it must be for disabled people who were hit by your government with 1400 euros of cruel cuts in the budget. They've been on the streets demanding again and again and again an emergency disability payment, not the full cost of disability payment which they were promised, not even the 1400 euros that you took off them back, just give disabled people 400 euros, that is a tiny amount that will go some way to cushion them from the blow, a targeted amount for them. But then you read the detail of the financial resolution number two and I'm afraid this is not a targeted measure for disabled people, it's a targeted measure for hauliers. So they're going to get an extra rebate on diesel to go back to the start of January and to go all the way to the end of June, but not ordinary householders. Of course hauliers need support, of course they do, of course their prices going up will feed through into the rest of the economy in terms of what people pay for the goods they buy in shops and so on, of course. But what's the measure to do that? Well it's obvious, the same measure is for everybody else, it's dealing with the issue of the price of diesel. But instead of actually doing that in an effective way for everybody in which they get the benefit and therefore consumers get the benefit at the end of the day and the population at large could do it, no no you've done a special scheme just for them, just for businesses. Very revealing about the government's approach to this new cost of living crisis. I don't think the government gets it that for ordinary people this cost of living crisis is coming on top of an existing cost of living crisis. People are really suffering, people were already really suffering two months ago. I mean we remember that shocking statistic about four in ten parents skipping meals, cutting back on meals in order to ensure that their kids have enough to eat. We know there's over 300,000 people in arrears on their energy bills right now. We know that your budget made all of that worse. Despite the misinformation that is put out there by the Taoiseach, we know, and the SRI, the Parliamentary Budget Office, all of them will say that your budget made it worse, made it hardest for the poorest groups in our society. That's the impact of your budget, increasing child poverty, increasing rates of poverty, increasing it for older people. I've woken up to respond to that, you're welcome. Let me tell you what the Parliamentary Budget Office said, it increases poverty rates from 11.7% to 13.2% in 2025. I'll get to you before we finish, the SRI says for the bottom 10% it's a cut of about two and a half percent in income. The SRI did not say that. I will get you the the exact figures by the time I'm finished. Your budget, people can go and check it online, hit disabled people hardest and hit the lowest income groups the hardest. Let me say what you should have done and what we are in favour of doing. We should cap prices. We should give people certainty. 175 as is contained in our bill for petrol and diesel, only a price cap can give certainty and security to car dependent households. The way you do that is you cap the price and then you adjust the tax as necessary to ensure that petrol and diesel can continue to be supplied and then we need to expand the remit of the CRU to investigate petrol and diesel prices and send inspection teams to verify prices at the pumps. We need fuel companies to open their books to the CRU and those found to be profiteering should be forced to contribute to the price caps by an equal amount to their excess profits. We need universal credits, just immediately get 500 euros back into the pockets of ordinary householders. It's the most immediate way to give people relief and that can be funded by a levy on the data centres. The data centres are using now more electricity than all households in the state combined and they're paying half the price for it. So let's fund it in that way. Let's, yes, give the an extra month of fuel allowance. Let's give an extra payment, a double payment of all social protection payments as targeted measures and then let's invest in getting people away from fossil fuels. I heard the Taoiseach earlier talk about the fact that no it didn't, the LNG and so on wasn't contradictory to moving away from fossil fuels. I mean of course it is. It was the latest demand of Trump at the White House whereby we want to sell more LNG. The warning signals came, the message should have been heard in terms of Ukraine but it wasn't. The western world didn't do anything to get away from fossil fuels. In this country we've continued on this track of reliance on fossil fuels and the result is that every extra unit of power added by wind has been swallowed up by the data centres and Micheál Martin wants to go even further with them. No more data centres. Let's make public transport free. Let's invest in retrofitting to get off our reliance on fossil fuels which is what makes us so exposed.