This legislation is a suite of reluctant half-measures, a package that does not meet the challenge of high fuel prices. Once this legislation is enacted petrol, diesel and home heating oil will continue to be unaffordable for hundreds of thousands of people and that is just not good enough. We know that it is not just the cost of fuel that people are struggling with. A package to reduce the cost of fuel is so desperately needed because the Government has let the cost of living spiral out of control for the past five years. There are thousands of working people who cannot make ends meet and who do not have a cent in savings. There are thousands of families who are slipping into debt because they just cannot cover their rent, grocery and energy bills every single month. These people desperately need a break. They need the Government to finally step up and end the rip off. This legislation is an admission that the Government's own policies are failing. If carbon taxes worked, the Government would not have to delay the planned increases to them. By delaying them, the Government is acknowledging the obvious, that alternatives to carbon-intensive fuels do not exist for many people. A pause in carbon tax increases is needed because rural people have no alternative to using home heating oil and travelling in petrol cars. It is incredibly unfair that these people continue to face artificially inflated energy prices that are pushing many of them into fuel poverty. Fuel support measures are so desperately needed, not only because of this recent spike in energy prices but because the Government has let the cost of living spiral out of control for the last five years. In just three weeks, over 1 million households who get their energy from Electric Ireland will see their energy bills skyrocket. The biggest energy provider in the State is hiking up gas prices by 7.7% and electricity prices by 8%. What does this legislation do for them? Energy companies have been given free rein. The Government needs to call this out for what it is, namely price gouging by a few big energy companies. We know that these big energy companies are already selling energy to households at three times the wholesale cost. We know that our energy prices, which used to be the lowest in the EU, are now the highest among all EU states. They are not just marginally higher but a shocking 52% higher than the average EU country. What do these rogue energy companies want now? They want to hike both electricity and gas prices by over double the rate of inflation. When will this Government wake up to the realities that people are facing? When is enough? When will the Government act? What the Government is doing now is sitting on its hands and overseeing a system that protects profits over people. There is no protection for children living in cold homes, for working people who cannot afford a hot shower in the morning or for the 300,000 people already in energy arrears. The only thing that is protected is the profits of energy companies. They have been allowed to hedge prices up and up, insulating their profits from any global shocks without the smallest regard for the bills that land on the kitchen tables of workers, pensioners, students and parents who are all finding it increasingly hard to get by. For weeks we have called on the Government to introduce an emergency cost-of-living budget, with energy credits to help thousands with these rip-off prices. The Government has ignored us and our demands. This legislation is testament to the Government's approach, which is to choose delay over action. It is too late and not enough. This legislation should include energy credits of €400, cuts to the USC to put €500 back in workers' pockets and targeted supports, including a €500 payment for people with disabilities. Instead, it is a reluctant suite of half measures that fail to tackle the reality of the energy poverty that, tragically, is widespread across this State. This problem cannot be solved by energy credits alone. We need a crackdown on energy companies to end these rip-off prices once and for all. Electricity and gas are natural monopolies. This market cannot be left to its own devices. The laissez-faire approach of this Government is exactly what has created the rip off in the first place. To have affordable energy we need regulation. We need an energy regulator with the powers to tackle price gouging and a mandate to ensure affordability. This legislation does nothing to recognise energy poverty. There is a not a single cent allocated to reducing the price of home heating oil which has surged by over 80% in the past year. Energy poverty exists because of the Government's political decisions, not because we do not have enough money to put an end to it. It exists because the Government has no ambition to end it. It has become more and more clear that the Government's ambitions lie elsewhere. Last week the Minister for foreign affairs, Deputy McEntee, told reporters that she is really ambitious for our country. She spoke of spending more on militarisation when discussing the EU's security action for Europe programme. She said that we should have taken out an EU loan at the taxpayers' expense to increase our military spending. The Oireachtas finance committee thoroughly scrutinised the security action for Europe programme and identified that it potentially conflicts with our neutrality and is incompatible with the EU's commitment to peace. The committee stated that it completely opposed the use of the EU general budget as a guarantee for these loans. However, the Minister's comments suggest that she is much more worried about impressing our friends in the EU than about listening to the concerns of the cross-party Oireachtas finance committee. Unbelievably, the Minister, Deputy McEntee, went even further in her comments. She went on to say that Britain should have been included in the security action for Europe programme, indicating, again, that she was not listening to the Oireachtas finance committee. It is shocking that a Government Minister wants Irish taxpayers' money to guarantee loans for British military spending that is being used to support Israel and the US as they commit genocide in Gaza. The cornerstone of our foreign policy has always been our neutrality and this Government is taking a wrecking ball to it. The shift towards militarisation and away from neutrality that is being pursued by this Government is an expensive and dangerous agenda that does nothing to serve the interests of the working people. Our national security relies on our neutrality. To think that today we are talking about not having the money to support working people who are unable to put food on the table and who are unable to meet the electricity bills they have - people who are thinking about whether they have the finance to pay energy bills if they put their electricity on and put their heating on. At the same time we have the Government telling us that it wants to go further in its militarisation agenda and it wants to go further in supporting the security action for Europe, SAFE, programme, about which the finance committee of this Dáil raised serious concerns. There is a serious question about where this Government's policies and interests lie because they do not lie with those working people, they do not lie with pensioners and they do not lie with those people who are €1,400 worse off as a result of the budget of last year. It is the people with disabilities who have said to the Government that enough is enough. They do not have the money to meet their daily needs but instead there seems to be enough money for militarisation and enough money to want the SAFE programme to go even further and to include Britain in that.

Sentiment score: 0.09