The Minister of State sits across from us practically every week to deal with motions from various Opposition groups so he will know only too well the challenges that families and small businesses across this country are encountering as a result of Ireland being simply unaffordable for far too many people in 2026. This is the umpteenth motion to be tabled in this House since the general election. We like to call this challenge a cost-of-living crisis but it is not a crisis because the word "crisis" suggests something temporary that will pass. This is a permacrisis, for want of a better description. It is a structural problem in our economy that is affecting our society. The reality is that, outside of thinking that throwing money at problems is a solution, the Government has no solution to the structural problems facing our economy and our society. For example, if the Government thinks that the structural problems in the hospitality sector can be addressed by throwing an inefficient and stupid tax cut at hospitality businesses, it has another thing coming. That simply will not work in the way we would all like to see. It makes no sense. In reality, it reflects a paucity of thinking at Government level, a lack of imagination and a tired managerialism at the heart of this Government. The Government has run out of ideas and has no mission or ambition to change this country for the better for the majority. It is simply picking winners. Edgar Morgenroth said in the media yesterday that fiscal policy in this country is now run by lobbyists. We may regard ourselves as advocates of the people and - dare I say it - lobbyists for the people of this country but there are very few people in this House who are standing up for the taxpayer. The days when Fine Gael would have said it stood up for the taxpayer are gone because of stupid tax cuts like the one introduced yesterday, which makes no sense whatsoever and actually comes at the expense of working people. Working people are paying for this because the resources available for some basic tax relief for working people last year was swallowed up by one of the stupidest in a long line of stupid tax cuts this Government has introduced since 2020. In fact, I will go as far back as 2016. The Government has wasted a boom, is reckless with the economy and is imprudent with the public finances. It is working people and people who depend on the State for their incomes who are being affected by this. Those chickens will come home to roost. The people who will pay are those who depend on the State for their income and working people, including public servants, who the Government has decided not to talk to about a successor to the current public sector pay deal, which ran out yesterday. That goes to show where this Government's priorities are. I will make some basic points on the motion. There is much to be welcomed, although I would quibble with many aspects. There is no reference to the need to restructure our childcare and early years system to make sure that childcare is affordable for families. The motion leans extremely heavily on charges associated with fossil fuels. We are not going to make energy cheaper in this country if we continue to rely on fossil fuels and just keep chasing the price by reducing excise duty and carbon taxes. What we need is a radical approach, a revolution of renewables. That means doing the necessary on offshore wind, realising that moonshot moment the former Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, spoke eloquently about a number of years ago before doing very little about it in reality. It means making sure that undertaking deep retrofits of our homes is not merely a pursuit for the middle class and the wealthy. We need to make sure that SEAI grants to retrofit our homes and introduce renewables are affordable and income-based. We need a fossil fuel-run car scrappage scheme to ensure the electric vehicle revolution we need. As others have said, we also need the reintroduction of targeted energy credits in the next budget to ensure that heating our homes and businesses is more affordable in the interim, as we make that move to renewables.

Sentiment score: -0.03