Cian O'Callaghan: Government failing families on cost of living

Go raibh maith agat Cathaoirleach agus Ar duas, beo aileum a rá go bhfuil ruddy an deacair do daoine anois. And I do want to thank Independent Ireland for bringing forward this motion, giving us the opportunity to talk about these very important issues in terms of the cost of living, pressures that people are facing day in, day out. We would take a different approach in terms of dealing with this crisis than the one that's outlined in this motion because we believe that it's fundamentally important that people do have emergency short-term supports that are needed, but also that we take action that is focused at the medium and long term so we don't go from crisis to crisis. And I do want to talk about that more in my contribution. An important part of our response has to be measures to help people who are struggling to keep food on the table today, who are worrying about when it gets cold again, how do they heat their homes. They are really making difficult choices, impossible choices day in, day out. Parents who, coming into summer now, know that they cannot afford activities for their kids, so their kids' friends are able to go on activities that cost money, but they're not able to do that. Families that know they won't be able to get a holiday. Families thinking already about the start of school, end of August, end of September, how are they going to meet costs there, iPads, other technologies, so forth, additional costs. All those worries that gnaw at people day in, day out. You know that people literally go to bed worrying about, wake up worrying about, and the government response to that has been wholly inadequate. At the same time, we have to have a long-term approach that means we are not going from crisis to crisis, and I will talk more about that. I just want to mention a couple of things in the opening from the Minister earlier, where there's talking about moving towards domestic sources of renewable energy to increase our energy security, boost competitiveness, and reduce the burden on ordinary people during shocks like this. Key words there, moving towards. We've had Fianna Ghael in office since 2011, and we have no offshore wind at all. So we're actually going, we had an offshore wind farm at that time, actually going backwards in terms of offshore renewable energy, which is an incredible indictment on this government. All the more incredible when you look at what Spain has achieved in the last number of years, where they've broken the dependency on electricity prices with gas prices, they've more and more renewable wind energy and solar energy in place, and that means that Spain has some of the cheapest electricity bills for households and businesses in Europe. Contrast to Ireland, where we've got the highest electricity bills for households and businesses in Europe, and not only that, we've won the highest reliances on importing fossil fuels of any European country. So we're incredibly exposed to what's happening at the moment in the Middle East, and incredibly exposed to any future shocks, and we're right on the way to paying out billions of euro in fines for not meeting our climate targets, because the failure of the government to invest sufficiently in renewable energy. Now the Social Democrats have put forward a practical proposal that could be done quickly by the government to help on this, our solar for all plan, to increase the grants that are available for households, because it's really at a reach for most households at the moment to avail of the current grants to invest in solar panels, and that would bring down household electricity bills, of course would help us meet our renewable energy targets, would mean we are less exposed to the current shock, and the future shocks that are unfortunately are going to come. So really would implore on the government to listen to our practical proposals that could be implemented quickly, because we do need that on top of emergency measures such as targeted energy credits of 400 euro to help households through this immediate crisis, we need an emergency cost of disability payment for disabled people, who incredibly at 1400 euro, up to 1400 euro, taken off them in their annual incomes by the government in the last budget, before this crisis, this latest crisis even hit, an incredibly cruel move by this government to cut disabled people's incomes by up to 1400 euro, having promised in the election and in the programme for government a cost of disability payment to help disabled people with the extra costs they face, who actually took up to 1400 euro off disabled people, a cruel cruel unnecessary decision in a country with a lot of resources, and of course we should be working on the more long-term measures as well, we have the highest unemployment rate of disabled people in Europe, so we wouldn't be needing to have such high levels of income supports if the government actually took the right actions, the necessary actions like has taken other European countries to ensure that more disabled people can participate in the labour market, it's incredible actually that the government's targets in terms of employment for disabled people in the public sector, the targets are actually below the current employment rate, that's an incredible indictment on the government's record on this, and that came to light during the estimates process and the documentation that the government produced, that is indefensible. Look there's a huge amount that needs to be done to to address these things, other measures that need to be done is around affordable child care, again another area that the government broke all its promises on, promised people within Simon Harris, promised during the election campaign that within a hundred days of the new government forming there'd be a proper road map in place for affordable child care to get it down to 200 euro a month, of course that wasn't produced, and of course in the last budget there was no measures to get the cost of child care down for families, that's a massive block for families that should have been done, of course there was promises again by Simon Harris to phase out her level fees, what happened in the last budget you actually increased fees by a thousand euro putting families and students under even more pressure, so promise after promise by government to help people with the cost of living and actually what you did is make matters worse, and furthermore we really do need the kind of actions that we're talking about that will get us out of these short-term crises, Sinéad O'Sullivan has written about this extensively, the need to build up our capacity as a state to invest in public services, invest in capacity, invest in things like renewable energy so we're not just having to put more and more money into emergency measures time and time again, which then of course reduces our capacity to be able to invest in the medium long-term measures. Go raibh maith agat.