Paul Lawless: Farmers Still Waiting - Where's the Fuel Relief?

We're now over a month since the fuel protest and not a single cent of the government's fuel subsidy has been paid out to farmers and contractors. This scheme was announced to great fanfare to quell the protests and yet the application process only opened in recent days. Farmers and contractors still don't know how much they'll qualify for because that scheme is capped and when is the window for applications? The 27th of May. One of the busiest times for farmers and contractors and accountants in terms of paperwork, in terms of BIS applications and VAT returns etc. Farmers and their accountants are buried at this time of year and the scheme itself Taoiseach is deeply unfair. Applicants must produce receipts for the entire 12 months of the year and then they are paid a subsidy based on five-fifths of their returns from the previous year but Taoiseach, farmers don't use fuel evenly across the year. It's heavily concentrated in the spring and in the summer at a time when silage needs to be cut, when fields need to be ploughed and tilled and crops harvested. So calculating the payment Taoiseach on essentially a monthly average from the previous year is deeply wrong and is systematically flawed and unfair on farmers. Taoiseach and I want to turn to the figures and the figures around the carbon tax because the statistics released to AINTO from parliamentary questions tell a very different story to the narrative that your government is selling. Your government is on track to collect an additional 200 million euros more this year than last year. We also know that a half a billion euros was collected on carbon taxes from 2020 to 2023 that was never spent on climate action measures. A half a billion euros left over, essentially not needed. And in relation to the Nora levy Taoiseach, another tax which has generated a half a billion euros since 2020 and that account sits in surplus by the region of a quarter of a billion euros. 278 million euros is on surplus Taoiseach. At a time when farmers are desperately crying out for help. At a time when margins in the agri sector have never been as tight. At a time when inputs are going sky-high and actually revenue is falling Taoiseach. So Taoiseach, is your government misleading the house in relation to carbon taxes and the necessity that you outline that they are so necessary? Then why is so much money sitting in surplus? Why is so much carbon taxes remaining unspent? So Taoiseach, my question. Your question time is up Deputy. It's totally inadequate for farmers and contractors. Your time is up and you should prepare in time Taoiseach. Well first of all, I don't agree with you. I think that there is a financial cost to the farmers and to the people who are working in agriculture. I don't accept your proposition that the fuel subsidy scheme for farmers, contractors, agricultural contractors is inadequate. I think it's a comprehensive scheme that was worked out in discussions again with representative organisations. There has to be some methodology attached to it. You haven't come up with any alternative but there has to be a clear methodology designed and the Minister of Agriculture has worked with the agricultural organisations in respect of that and the representative organisations and every effort will be made to support farmers, contractors in that regard and the Minister for Transport on the other hand then dealing with the haulage industry which is also critical. And it is endeavouring to base it on previous usage which I think is reasonable and because that will give us some indication of the needs and the additionality in terms of the costs that have undoubtedly been incurred because of the the war in Iran and the increase in fuel prices globally as a result of that. In terms of carbon tax, the revenues from the carbon tax are used to support lower-income households, farmers and indeed the retrofitting program itself. Since 2020 Deputy 4.2 billion euro has been allocated from carbon tax revenues for all of those purposes and the ESRI analysis shows that lower-income households are net beneficiaries due to accompanying social protection and measures and to just give an example this year alone in terms of our 2025 you're looking at about 558 million for residential and community upgrades including solar PV and that's a significant increase on the previous year. About 350 million euros for welfare measures this year, working family payment, child support payment, fuel allowance, extension of fuel allowance, eligibility, all coming from the revenue from the carbon tax. Now you've been a big advocate for the fuel allowance and you've been saying we should increase it even more. The revenue comes from the carbon tax revenue. Agriculture like 173 million has been allocated to farmers through agri-environmental schemes including funding for acres under the CAP strategic plan and between 2020 and mid 2025 about 366 million euro was allocated to agri-climate supports. That's the farmers basically in terms of a variety of schemes. That's income to farmers Deputy and when you consider acres alone is about... Thank you Taoiseach, time is up. Deputy Lawless will respond. Taoiseach, the very clear methodology that we outlined over the fuel protest was to scrap carbon tax because that would have provided an immediate relief instantly to farmers contractors who desperately need it. Instead we are now a month on from the fuel protest at a time when fuel is still very high, the green diesel is still extraordinarily high in terms of last year's figures and there's been no relief. No relief and many farmers have no idea when they will receive that relief. So that's what you should have done Taoiseach. You should have removed the carbon tax and the point that you've made on many occasions that the carbon tax is necessary. The actual data says otherwise Taoiseach. 500 million euros, a half a billion euros is unspent in relation to carbon charges and my question to you Taoiseach, is it your intention to continue to increase carbon tax year after year irrespective of the price of fuel? Is it your intention to increase carbon tax again this October? Taoiseach will respond. Deputy you have to, if you want to scrap it, that's huge money, just to scrap it entirely just like that. Have you costed that? Yeah and where you gonna find it? Where are we gonna find it? And you want another billion? I'm asking the rhetorical question. Yeah. And you're gonna ask for another billion somewhere else and another billion somewhere else and another billion over here. That's been your performance all year. All year. And you expect us to magic up money for farmers, to magic up money for those on social protection, to magic up money for tax cuts for working people. We have to magic all that up as well. We have to magic up money for education, magic up money for social protection and keep abolishing every tax that exists. That's your approach. That's it's fantasy land. You're not living in the real world and we would spend all of the carbon tax revenue, we would spend all of the carbon tax revenue on vital areas due with climate in terms of and energy efficiency and retrofitting. And Taoiseach time is up and just before I'm. I'm farmers by the way isn't I?