I also thank Independent Ireland for tabling this motion this morning. It is a well-intentioned motion that is designed to put forward some solutions to the real challenges households and business are facing at present. It provides us with another opportunity to tease out the respective positions of parties in this House in that regard. It would be remiss of me not to remind Government that just two weeks ago, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Independent TDs who support the Government voted against a Labour Party motion to introduce a mini-budget targeted specifically at those who require support the most, and I refer to those who have been essentially left behind by the recent package introduced by Government, the PAYE workers who are, to use a hackneyed phrase, genuinely the backbone of this country and who produce the goods and services that have allowed us to generate significant wealth at Exchequer level, allowing us to invest in services and to have the resources we need to support our society as best we can. Nobody is saying that any government can insulate every single household and business from the worst effects of this unprecedented crisis, which the International Energy Agency itself has said will have a worse impact than the 1970s oil crisis. We in Labour certainly are not saying that. In many respects, the inability of households to absorb this latest energy shock can be traced back to poor decisions made by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in budget 2026, particularly in two areas. There was a failure to fully index core social welfare rates, which has exposed to an even greater level those who depend on the State for their income and who spend a disproportionate amount of their income on heating their homes and on food and groceries. There are also the issues the Government has created for PAYE workers, those very same working people who get up early in the morning, who work hard and who rightly feel the social contract is broken. They do everything properly and correctly. They play by the rules. They work hard and educate themselves and their families. They are paying high rents and mortgages. They feel they get little in return. Their PAYE tax bands, rates and credits are not indexed, which means that, in many cases, they have experienced an effective pay cut. Any small pay increase that has been received is swallowed up by the Revenue Commissioners and goes back into the general taxation pot. We are living in unprecedented times and in an era of real uncertainty and insecurity. That post-Second World War settlement is not just fraying at the edges; it has collapsed. I would prefer if the motion considered why that is the case. It is because of a move to far-right politics and the election of populist and extremist leaders around the world, egged on by tech billionaires who have no interest in the travails of small businesses and ordinary households across the world. Their only concern is to enrich themselves. It is the behaviour of these maniacs that has created the problems we are experiencing. The problems here in Ireland are even greater because of our excessive reliance on fossil fuels. We cannot keep subsidising high fossil fuel prices or continue relying on fossil fuels for a couple of different reasons. The first is that we clearly need to decarbonise our economy. The second is we need to improve our energy security. By improving our energy security in terms of the move to renewables, which is not mentioned, from what I can see, in this motion, we can then make our energy bills cheaper for every household and business across the country. We need a renewed focus on that. I am interested in the idea - and I accept that it is well-intentioned - of a national framework for economic resilience and emerging fiscal planning. Who could argue with that? However, the idea that businesses and industries will have some kind of visibility in the context of a potential activation of certain supports during another energy shock is intriguing. Why would we tell highly profitable fossil fuel energy companies that regardless of the increases they impose on consumers, we are going to subsidise that and every household anyway? That does not make sense. Certainly, I would have to look askance at any businessperson who thinks that it does make sense. No one should have any difficulty with a move to more sound economic and fiscal planning. That is something we support. I would query some aspects of this motion, while, at the same time, respecting the intent, which is, in general, more positive. When we are looking at the question of economic and fiscal resilience, we also need to look at the structural changes we need to make to our economy and governance system in order to ensure that is the case and that we will not, in this era of permacrisis, be back in this situation again next year, the year after or the year after that. How do you make an economy more resilient? You do it by ensuring the economy is managed properly and that we avoid the boom-and-bust scenarios that have bedevilled this State for much of its history. We have seen the fallout from that in recent years and the consequences for households, businesses and citizens. We do that by ensuring that housing is safe, secure and affordable. We create a resilient economy by investing in education at all levels, from early years right through to fourth level and lifelong learning. We do that by getting to grips with AI and the threat of mass displacement of jobs and businesses. We do it by closing the income inequality gap that is destroying both our society and the social contract. We do that by embedding collective bargaining systems into our economy, which is something the Government is resisting. We create a more resilient economic framework by having a renewed focus on the development of highly productive, innovative, indigenous Irish enterprises. We are far too reliant on a small handful of American-based foreign direct investment firms for the bulk of our corporation tax receipts and for a significant proportion of our PAYE receipts from the good jobs they have to create. That is a risk that is always worth repeating. We create a more sound fiscal position and more secure economy by ensuring we tax wealth and assets better than we have managed to do to date. As I said earlier, we do it by focusing on renewables rather than relying on fossil fuels. This motion just deals with the symptoms of that problem as opposed to offering a solution. We also do that by ensuring that we continue to use excess corporation tax receipts and put them into the Future Ireland Fund and the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund, as well as being responsible about how we plan our economy. We need to address the structural issues that are creating the cost-of-living permacrisis that has been ongoing for a number of years. Given the volatility in the world at present, we are likely to experience these kinds of shocks again and again. Rather than opting for sticking-plaster solutions that are well-intentioned, what we need to do is address the real fundamental imbalances in our economy and in how our society works. That is how we address those problems and that is what we need to focus on. However, that is not where the focus of this Government or the previous Government has been.

Sentiment score: 0.12