I will start by acknowledging the deeply upsetting incident that took place in a Tusla facility in Donaghmede yesterday. This is a shocking event. My thoughts and those of people right across the House and country are with all of those impacted by it, in particular the bereaved family and those injured. The loss of life is unconscionable. The focus must now be on the welfare and safety of the young people and staff at the facility. Tusla is working to put additional supports in place to do that. I also want to acknowledge the staff and members of An Garda Síochána who arrived at the scene yesterday. There is obviously an ongoing Garda investigation, but this is a horrific and deeply saddening incident which I wanted to acknowledge here. I thank Deputy O'Farrell for the question. I hope she tells those people she meets across the country that only one party in Dáil Éireann proposed giving subsidies to the energy companies. It was not Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party, the Social Democrats, the Independents or anybody else here. The response of Sinn Féin in the last Dáil, its solution to the energy price situation, was to give taxpayers' money over to the energy companies.
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I am answering the question, Deputy.
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The only other place that happened in the world was when Liz Truss was British Prime Minister. Sinn Féin's solution was to take hard earned taxpayers' money from young couples like those the Deputy met in Galway and give it to the energy companies, throw it away. That was never a good idea. I welcome the fact that the Deputy now acknowledges that it was not and is no longer pursuing that ridiculous, economically illiterate policy.
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That was the choice on offer to the people in the last election.
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Sinn Féin's plan was to give money from taxpayers to the big energy companies and our plan was to consider permanent and sustainable ways of reducing costs. Again, I hope the Deputy tells people that we have taken measures in the budget to help them with the cost of energy. I am sure she tells them that we took a measure around reducing tax on energy in the budget. We decided to reduce the VAT rate from 13.5% to 9% not just for one or two years or to the end of the year, but for five years. I hope the Deputy welcomes that. I am sure she does. We decided to reduce the VAT rate and make that permanent for five years. That is an important and practical tax reducing measure that we took in the budget.
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The second thing we did-----
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-----was to increase the fuel allowance to help people most at risk including, by the way, working people. I do not like the way the Deputy suggests helping people through social welfare is not helping working people. Many, many, many working families benefit from the fuel allowance situation.
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We have increased the fuel allowance by €5. We have also extended it to more than 50,000 households, including people on the working family payment – the clue is in the name: the working family payment. Some 460,000 households will now benefit from the fuel allowance, more than a quarter of the households in the country. That is a practical measure that we took in the budget. On top of that, to answer the Deputy's question directly, we have taken a very specific measure against the energy companies and price gouging by having a tax on the profits of energy companies which has yielded €271 million over a two-year period. We taxed the energy companies on their profits, but the Deputy left that out as well. On top of that, we reduced the PSO levy-----
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-----for those on renewable energy.
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Deputy Gould, maybe one day they will give you a go at Leaders' Questions but today it is Mairéad so please let her do it. To try to help people with the cost of energy, we have applied a zero rate of VAT on the installation of solar panels, something people look for. We have reduced the rate of VAT on low emission heat pump heating systems. We have increased the number of additional needs payments. Energy costs are real, absolutely, and that is why we took a number of practical measures to help people in the budget and we targeted those measures at those most in need.
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That is just not true. I just told the Deputy what we are doing. She asked a very important question on a very important issue. The whole assertion of her question and the premise behind it was that we did nothing on energy. She stood up, and the record of the Dáil will show it, and said we did not reduce tax. I am telling her that we reduced value added tax on energy bills for the next five years in the budget. That is an error – one cannot use the L word in here, but it was the first mistruth the Deputy told. Second, the Deputy said we did not help working families. We extended the fuel allowance to people who get a working family payment. That is a second mistruth the Deputy told. The third thing she said is that the Taoiseach and I had not said what we will do in relation to energy companies. I told her we brought in a tax on their profits that has yielded €271 million over the past two years. The Sinn Féin plan was to hand over taxpayers' money to the energy companies. There was a clear choice in the last election. The people gave their verdict and they voted for centrist politics instead of Sinn Féin policies that would have bankrupted the nation and spent €4 billion more in the budget.
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I want to address the Deputy's first point on Donaghmede. I join with her in rightly acknowledging the very difficult, challenging, stressful and sometimes dangerous environment in which our care workers find themselves. None of us can fully comprehend the most horrific, tragic and saddening situation care workers endured yesterday. I want to join with the Deputy in paying tribute to them. I also agree with her that there will, obviously, need to be full answers and transparency in relation to all the procedures and protocols that were in place. As she rightly said, however, a Garda investigation is under way, and we need to allow that process to proceed. I obviously do not want to, nor has the Deputy, in any way interfere with the privacy of those involved or the ongoing Garda investigation other than to say that this is a very serious incident and needs to be treated as such. It is also an extraordinarily tragic and saddening incident. I thank the Deputy for raising the issue of childcare. I will speak directly to the Minister, Deputy Foley, about the issue she has highlighted in relation to Pobal and the drawdown of grants and where that is at. I will ask the Minister to come back to her directly. We are absolutely committed to reducing the cost of childcare to €200 per month during the lifetime of the Government. I will also acknowledge that the Labour Party was the first party to propose that, and there is now a political consensus across this House among pretty much all political parties that this is what we are going to deliver during the lifetime of this Government. I did say that I would like to see significant progress on it in the early part of the Government, and we can still make significant progress on it in the early part of the Government. We have only had the first of five budgets. However, we do need to see everything move in some form of sequential order that makes sense. There are 21 commitments in the programme for Government relating to childcare. The next practical step now will be for the Minister, Deputy Foley, to publish the action plan on childcare to see how we move the 21 actions together in a way that gets us to the €200 per month per child, absolutely, but that also makes sure that some of the issues the Deputy is highlighting and some of the issues I see in my own constituency and home town around places, capacity and the need for public provision are also addressed. There are simply not enough childcare spaces. That lack of capacity is having a real impact for families. As the Deputy acknowledged, we did in the budget provide funding to expand capacity in the sector while continuing to freeze fees at the levels they were four years ago. The cost of childcare does need to come down. The Minister will publish that roadmap and action plan very shortly. We need to show parents and providers the sequence in which we intend to move forward. We have outlined a record budget for childcare of almost €1.5 billion. The national childcare scheme, which has over 250,000 children currently enrolled, will be further funded for an additional 35,000 children next year, which is a 14% increase. In the coming months, the Minister will also set out plans for a new maximum fee cap set from next September, reducing costs for families paying the highest fees first across the country. The Ministers, Deputies Foley and Burke, and Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, have taken measures to sign off on a 10% increase in the minimum rate of pay for educators. That took place this Monday. There is money in the budget to do further on pay in 2026. We did also specifically target children most in need of additional supports, including expanding the back-to-school clothing and footwear payment to preschool children for the first time ever.
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I assure the Deputy that there is an urgency on our part in this regard. I agree with her - I do not want to say it is not just a social issue because social issues are important - but it is also an economic issue that there are people at home today or who are changing their working hours or working arrangements, not out of choice but out of a lack of access to childcare in a way that works for them, their working patterns and their lives and families. It is a social and economic issue that disproportionately impacts women. There needs to be a real urgency, and there is an urgency. There is also a degree of political consensus at least around the destination or the North Star. I hope that once the Minister, Deputy Foley, publishes the road map and action plan, which I expect to be in the coming weeks, we can have good collaborative scrutiny and work on these matters here and at the appropriate Oireachtas committees. The Deputy referenced the previous Government. In fairness, I was in the previous Government. I led the previous Government for part of it. We did take a number of measures to reduce fees them year after year. I see Deputy O'Gorman in the Chamber. He was the Minister. I acknowledge his role too. We are committed to getting to the €200. The pay issue is important. That is why we have seen the order signed by the Ministers, Deputies Foley and Burke, and the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon. We have also provided funding for further moves on pay in 2026.
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I have never heard the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, trashing anybody; it is generally not the way he operates. The issue is very important. The Deputy asked me to try to untangle it. In my mind it is quite clear. The Taoiseach, the Government, Members across this House and people across the country are very committed to the issue of climate action. I was sitting here beside the Taoiseach when he delivered his budget speech. I read at the time some of the coverage of his comments from his meeting at Stripe and so forth. What I very much took from what he was saying was the fact that when we are trying to accelerate the delivery of infrastructure, often including key infrastructure to help us meet our climate targets, we are living in a society where we are constantly being hit with judicial reviews and planning delays. While people have a right to do that and I respect that, it is somewhat of an irony that when we are trying to deliver projects that would assist with the climate, people take judicial reviews or planning objections on climate or environmental grounds. The frustration the Taoiseach was voicing, which I am sure some Opposition Deputies must have experienced when they were in government, was this issue of the public good versus the culture of blocking essential infrastructure. We see it in relation to water. We often see it in relation to renewable energy and major transport projects, including public transport. That is the point that I thought the Taoiseach was making in his budget speech. He was also making the point, as we all do, that there is no rowing back or ability or wish to row back from the Government's climate commitments. We provided €1.1 billion in funding for the Department of climate in the budget. We are absolutely committed to delivering on Ireland's responsibility to address the climate crisis. I see and know he also sees huge opportunities for jobs and our economy from that transition. The latest data from the Environmental Protection Agency regarding emissions shows that Ireland's emissions continued to fall for a third year in a row and they are at their lowest level in three decades. Emissions decreased by 2% in 2024 compared with 2023, and they decreased by 10.6% between 2021 and 2024. That happened against a backdrop of our economy thankfully growing strongly during that period. I know and acknowledge, as does the Government, that it is not at the pace required, and a 10% reduction in emissions in 2025 would be needed if we are to stay within the first carbon budget. There are real challenges and there is a real need to pick up the pace on climate action. I accept that point, as does the Government. The next phase is about acceleration, doing more and doing it faster. There is frustration across government and society that sometimes it takes so long to actually deliver projects. We need to address how we unblock those things and try to create that sense of society pulling together on the delivery of infrastructure rather than just heading to the courts or just objecting. The Taoiseach is right to try to create a public discussion and debate on that.
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I need to get the Deputy the exact figure, which I can do once I leave the Chamber, but yes, we will hit the target. It is an important target. I acknowledge the important role that the Deputy's part played in government, including the former Minister Eamon Ryan, as he was at that time. We are committed to it and on track to hit that target. I will get the Deputy the number for the specific allocation. We are at crucial moment in relation to climate action. There is a need to accelerate and pick up pace. There is a point about how we bring people with us. I do not think the Deputy disagrees on this. He is the leader of the Green Party. He is passionate about this and tries to bring people with him on that. How we bring people with us on the next phase will be important. If we are to make the transitions that we need to make, it will require significant delivery of infrastructure, particularly around renewables. The point the Taoiseach made publicly when he met Stripe,is not an unfair one. If we constantly get bogged down in judicial reviews and planning objections when we try to pick up the pace of delivery, that will frustrate our collective aim.
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The Deputy raises an interesting point. He has raised somewhat similar points about inheritance tax and the likes in the past as well. It is about fairness and equality in how our tax systems, schemes and the likes treat people. It is a debate that is genuinely worth having and it is certainly thought-provoking. It is quite a technical and complex area. Obviously Deputies do not have to give notice of the issues coming up on Leader's Questions, so allow me to do my best on it. Should we have a conversation about it and scrutiny of it? Absolutely, we should. I balance those comments by saying that equality is absolutely vital and I am proud of the journey this country has been on regarding equality and many of the positive changes we and the people of Ireland have taken over recent years. We also need to look at another important word, which is "sustainability" of pension schemes, particularly when the demographics of our country and indeed world are changing, with an ageing population and more people relying on that. Not to take away from the Deputy's specific query, but I make the broad point that often in a republic, we pay into things that we may not necessarily directly benefit from but we do so because we believe there is societal good, perhaps for dependants or children left behind. There is a debate about what I get in return for what I am paying into and whether there is a case for an opt-out in certain schemes versus what we should all be expected to pay into to create that sort of republic that plans and prepares for the future and those left behind. The Deputy has certainly provoked a thought in me. It is an issue that merits further consideration. Maybe at the relevant Oireachtas committee, we could ask that there be a presentation or a degree of scrutiny. That is a matter for the committee, but I would certainly be supportive of that. This changed quite a number of years ago. My understanding from general recollection is that it changed on the grounds of ensuring the scheme could be sustainable. The Deputy is asking how that compares with the equality obligations and that merits discussion.
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Like I said, these are debates worth having because the composition of families and households has changed significantly in our country in relatively recent times. Sometimes schemes and legislation can take time to catch up with that changing reality. These are always issues that we, as legislators and policymakers, should scrutinise. When that opt-out was ended quite a number of years ago, long before my time in government, the grounds were also expanded to include more categories through which more people could benefit but I am open to correction on that. There is a broader point that two citizens could pay into a whole variety of schemes, including PRSI and the likes, and then at the end of a lifetime when you tot it up, one person may have derived more benefit from it than the other. We are not a private company in that sense. We pay into the central pot for the benefit of having that safety net and the provision of services and the likes. Let me reflect on what the Deputy has said today and revert to him directly.
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