I pay tribute to Deputy Nash for his immense work in preparing this mini-budget, which I commend to the House. After Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the energy crisis that followed, the Labour Party was the first party to call for a windfall tax on the gross and excessive profits that were being made by energy companies. It took the Government a year and a half to do it but a temporary solidarity contribution, as it became known, was enacted in 2023 and covered the excess profits of fossil fuel energy companies for the years 2022 and 2023. Some €267 million was raised; it was ring-fenced and helped to reduce the burden of high energy costs on vulnerable households. Then, this really progressive and useful tax was just stopped but the cost-of-living crisis has never stopped. Energy prices have never returned to what they were prior to the war on Ukraine. Fossil fuel companies continue to make record profits. The time has clearly come for this windfall tax to be reintroduced, and that is what we in the Labour Party are calling for today. This fossil fuel crisis has touched more or less every household and small business in the country. We know that 500,000 households are already in arrears on their energy bills. I know people with good jobs and steady careers who are simply not able to pay their bills currently. However, it is low-income households, in particular, who need a lifeline. That is why we are calling for the introduction of targeted energy credits for those with an income of less than €80,000. Before the Government gives out that we only ever want to spend, spend, spend, the credits would be funded by the windfall tax on energy company profits and the other measures that my colleagues have outlined. The Government cannot dither on this again. I hope the Minister for energy will lend his support to us on this. If he does not want to listen to us, he might listen to his party colleague, Barry Andrews, MEP, who has made a similar call. Our costings put the revenue raised from this windfall tax at €476 million, €270 million of which would be used for energy credits, with the remainder put towards social welfare supports, such as a bonus double payment. On many occasions in this House, I have called for a crackdown on profiteering by energy companies in the midst of this cost-of-living crisis. Time and again, we have seen them hike their prices despite very healthy profits. Just last week, when another price rise was announced, I called on the Minister to ensure that the State-owned energy company, Electric Ireland, did not follow the private operators and increase its prices. I repeat that call today. To its credit, Electric Ireland has held off recently on price rises, as is only right and proper for a State-owned company. That must continue. Trump and Netanyahu's illegal war in the Middle East shows very little sign of ending soon. Part of the solution has to be reducing our fossil fuel use. That is why we are proposing a pilot programme of free public transport. Along with introducing a real right to remote work, this is the best way to protect people from the high costs of petrol and diesel by cutting out the cost of commuting altogether. We must offer supports to people in the here and now but the longer-term ambition has to be reducing our dependence on the fossil fuels that have caused this crisis. That means putting the supports in place to help people switch to EVs, particularly in more rural areas with a less developed public transport system. I raised the abysmal uptake of zero emissions HGV grants with the Minister last week. That scheme and the incentives must be reviewed so that they are actually availed of and used. We also need to seriously scale up and deploy our renewable generation capacity. The theoretical musings we have heard about nuclear power this week from Fianna Fáil are simply a distraction. They are fundamentally unserious at a time when we need to just do the simple things right. We know where our renewable potential is, and it is primarily in wind. Now more than ever, we need urgency and focus from the Government in getting offshore wind built. We are told it will be another four years before we even start construction on any offshore wind farms. Just get it done. People are hurting. The Government must heed the calls in our motion to give people support in the short term and focus its attention on the resources we actually have, not fantasise about new energy sources when we have not built an offshore turbine for 20 years.

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