Mary Lou McDonald: Billions in Surplus, Families Left Cold

Can we extend a very warm welcome to Margaret Loftus, who's in the public gallery, who's appearing before the Justice Committee today. Taoiseach, you have published your spring economic forecast and it tells a very clear story. Government expects the state's surplus to grow from €5 billion to over €9 billion. Billions more flowing into the exchequer. Your government is taking in billions more and yet people can't afford to heat their homes. People can't pay their electricity bills. It's as though there are two different realities in this country. One in your forecast of growth, of surpluses, and another at kitchen tables across the land, cold homes, mounting bills and real fear. The energy crisis is not easing, it is intensifying. Electricity prices are forecast to rise again and your own ministers warn of increases of up to 9% in the months ahead. We saw repeated hikes last year and now more are coming. More than 300,000 households are already in arrears on their energy bills and yet your response is not to act, but to comment. Not to intervene, but to observe. It's as if you are spectators in this crisis rather than government responsible for fixing it. Over 750,000 households rely on home heating oils and their bills have doubled in a matter of weeks. Last week my colleague Chakta Peers Doherty spoke about one young working couple, both in employment, who have gone three weeks without heat because they can't afford it. Three weeks without heat, Taoiseach. They did everything right, they've worked hard, studied, built their lives and still they cannot heat their home. And now families face rising school transport costs and the return of junior and leaving cert fees. That's what you're bringing to people's doors. You've scrapped energy credits. You refused even to cut carbon tax on home heating oil when people needed relief most. So while pressure mounts, you pull supports. At the moment that households need help, you step back. When intervention is required, you choose inaction. And now it seems your message is this, that things will get worse and you will look at it again in October. That's six months away. By the way, it's exactly what you did last year. You delayed. You waited. And when October's budget did come, your decisions actually left people worse off. So here we go again. On the one hand, your government talks up rising prices and further shocks. On the other, you tell people to struggle on and wait. That is unacceptable. You've been warned about soaring energy costs, told that your measures were inadequate. You were told that people need real intervention. And you did not listen. This failure, by the way, is not confined to energy. We see it in housing. This weekend, figures show eviction notices surging since your rent hike bill came in. Exactly as we warned. People see the same pattern. You don't listen. You delay. You make the wrong calls. And ordinary people pay the price. So now, on the back of your spring economic statement today, the question is simple. With billions more available to you, why do you choose not to act? For people who can't heat their home, can't meet their electricity bill, how do you justify refusing to act on the cost of home heating oil while prices remain so high? Why do you refuse to introduce energy credits when people desperately need them? Why don't you bring forward meaningful cost-of-living supports? First of all, I agree with your analysis, Deputy, and the government fully understands the pressure that people are under as a result of the various cost shocks over recent years. If you go from COVID to the invasion of Ukraine, when inflation at its peak of 10%, we understand that and prices are at an elevated high. And now the war in the Middle East, which has again created a significant shock in terms of both fossil fuel supply globally and in terms of prices. And every country across the world is grappling with this reality. Now, we have responded in a substantial, targeted, and sustainable way, and not just a global sum of 750 million, but in terms of food production, in terms of road haulage, and in terms of the reduction in excise duties, which benefits everybody. And we will continue to keep a focus on this, and in terms of home heating, and in terms of issues. We do have to look at more permanent ways to ease pressures on families, particularly from the energy pricing more generally. Now, you referenced the surplus, the government surplus, but as an exchequer deficit, as you know, of about 1.8 billion. And you know what's happening here, that we're transferring funding from the exchequer into the investment funds. So, it's not as if there's billions hanging around in a drawer somewhere to just take and spend. You surely know that. And what's happening with that funding, it's been invested in people, in housing, in energy and infrastructure, offshore wind projects, that's what ISF are doing, solar farm financing, grid expansion and interconnectors, battery storage systems for renewables, building energy retrofit programs, the EV charging clean public transport fleet, circular economy, forestry carbon sequestration projects, national scale retrofit financing platforms, equity and large housing developments, delivery of nationwide housing supply, mixed tenure schemes, urban regeneration partnerships, regional housing projects. That's where the investments are happening. And much, much more than that, but you seem to misunderstand it. Are you saying we should wind up the funds, the Future Ireland Fund and the Climate, Nature and Investment Fund? I mean, the Infrastructure and Nature Fund is helping to fund the metro, for example. Are you saying we scrap the metro? Are you saying we scrap these projects that ISF is investing in? And I think that would be a huge mistake. And we need, and we're very clear, housing remains our ultimate priority. Infrastructure is key to everybody in the country. That is care, disability and child poverty. And these are areas that we have focused very strongly in, and we are in a position to target. You don't pay any heed to these factors. You seem to want to risk everything in the middle of this war, and I think that would be a foolish thing to do. And we do, notwithstanding what I've said. I think it does make sense after a 750 allocation so far, that we would look at how structurally we can ease the pressure on families permanently around the energy cost area. And that would take a bit of work. Because we do need to be targeted as well, Deputy, in how we allocate people's resources. And that is a fundamental point, I think, that you consistently ignore. So the time that we have left, we need to look at how we allocate people. We have a lot of people, there's no doubt about that. The population is probably the largest in the whole of Europe. The population is the largest in the whole of Europe. There are more people than we are. And if we were to go ahead with that, we would be at the end of the road, not the end of the road. And we would be at the end of the road. And we would be at the end of the road. So that's guff, Tíosach. Plain and simple. You've given us a catalogue of your own failures. Housing, the metro, infrastructure, fail, fail, fail on your part. But now as we learn that the projected surplus will grow from 5.1 to more than €9 billion, you have the poor amounts for struggling families. That's all you're offering. And I don't know if you think that people live lives of fiction, but I want you to hear me very clearly that families are struggling now, in the today, in the here and now. And part of our economic resilience and the health of our economy and our society has to be to intervene when families are struggling. You don't leave them in the lurch. You don't leave hundreds of thousands of people unable to meet their electricity bills. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people struggling to pay for their home heating. There is an obligation on you as government to listen, to hear and to intervene. Why will you not do that with all of these additional billions that are now projected? Retrofitting is not a failure, Deputy. 250,000 houses have been retrofitted. That's a success and all of those families can enjoy lower bills as a result of that retrofitting. But could I also say to you, government didn't wait. You have to be honest, over the last number of years we've brought in very significant schemes that permanently reduce the cost of living for people. Free primary and second level school books. That has reduced costs for families with children going to schools. We've also, in terms of free hot school meals, a very recent innovation which also helps families. The National Child Care Scheme is a universal subsidy that helps to reduce the cost of child care. In terms of the fuel allowance, we've extended that and we brought in 50,000 extra who are on the working family payment. So we didn't wait. In the budget we took very concrete measures. The new baby grant of 280 euros is paid in addition to the first month of child benefit for children born or adopted on or after the 1st of December 2024. That's ongoing. All of those measures. We've extended the free travel pass over 70s in terms of the medical card. Lots of things we've done and we're going to do more Deputy and we will do more in the time ahead.