Of course, the Government has not waited to act. It has introduced what is either the largest or second largest package of supports in the EU. It was announced on the floor of this House around two weeks ago, and I am pleased to say it is having an impact. While diesel and petrol prices are still too high, people have seen them lower at the pumps than they were before the intervention. People see that with their own eyes because we took the decision to reduce the excise on diesel, even going beyond what was allowed under the energy tax directive to reduce it further. We also took the decision to reduce petrol and green diesel costs. Yesterday, we announced two significant support schemes for crucial sectors of the economy - farmers, fishers, farm contractors and hauliers. I certainly heard words of welcome for those schemes, and I am sure the Deputy must have, too. I heard them on the radio and television. Farmers and their representative bodies said the schemes would help and make a difference. The scheme for farmers and farm contractors will open as soon as next Tuesday. The Deputy is right to highlight the issue of inflation because the war against Iran - the bombing of Iran - has caused inflation to increase, but it is also true to say that the economic analysis of the package that we have introduced has shown it is suppressing inflation. The chief economist in the Department of Finance believes that the package we introduced will not just benefit farmers, fishers, hauliers and people at the pumps, but will also suppress inflation by around 0.6% per month. This will benefit people, by comparison with what they would otherwise have experienced, in the supermarket or local shop as they go about dealing with the cost of living. The ESRI report did not fall from the sky. It was commissioned by the Government itself because it is always good to have an evidence base. The report states many things. It notes that the number of people at risk of energy poverty or of not being able to warm their homes nearly halved between 2013 and 2024. In 2013, in the depths of a financial crisis, 25% of households in Ireland were struggling to heat their homes. The percentage was still too high at the end of 2024, when it was down to 14%. The report also found that the fuel allowance scheme was very effective. The Minister, Deputy Calleary, his predecessors and this and the last Governments have not sat idly by since the end of 2024. In fact, in the two budgets since then, we took measures to increase the fuel allowance further and extend it to more people. We have seen it extended to more older people and to 50,000 more low-income families. We have seen the amount of the allowance increased also. The war has had a real impact, and that is why, in addition to those measures, we decided to further supplement it by €77 million, extending it for another month, benefiting 470,000 people. The report refers to the need to help people to warm their homes and ensure they are more energy efficient. I am pleased to say that we are also taking measures in this regard, with record funding this year to help to upgrade people's homes, make them more energy efficient and make them warmer so they will be cheaper to heat, allowing us to move away from the over-reliance on fossil fuels. We have seen an increase in the application rate for these grants of 186% as a result of decisions made by the Minister for housing, Deputy O'Brien, and Government colleagues. Grants for windows, doors and heat pumps are all up hugely on last year. Since 2019, over 250,000 home energy upgrades have been delivered thanks to Government funding of over €1.7 billion. This is not a question of anybody having to wait for anything. This is a Government acting beyond the government of any other European member state to try to make real progress. The Deputy may like to put forward a narrative but people out there know that we have taken measures to reduce the price of diesel and petrol, help key sectors of the Irish economy and suppress inflation, and they know that we stand ready to take more in the months.
Sentiment score: 0.23
Wow.
Sentiment score: 0.59
It is quite extraordinary that after 16 years as the Opposition spokesperson on finance, the Deputy still believes that a cost-of-living package of €750 million does not help. Of course it helps. It helps reduce the cost of diesel and petrol; it extended the fuel allowance; it is making people's homes warmer; it is helping the farmers, fishers and hauliers; and it is helping to suppress inflation. The Deputy wants to ignore all of that because he has this narrative of telling the Irish people that the Government is refusing to act. The Irish people are not stupid. They know we are acting.
Sentiment score: 0.11
Deputy Doherty is trying to convince them of a false narrative, but the Irish people know something else, too. He Deputy does not want "an" emergency budget. He wants one a week.
Sentiment score: 0.12
He came in here about two weeks ago and asked me to bring forward a package of measures that would have cost €1 billion. Last week, Sinn Féin held its Ard-Fheis and said, "God, we had better come up with another plan - €3.2 billion". Sinn Féin's policies are not sustainable. We will have no options left in the winter if the Deputy continually comes in here every week and says "another billion, another billion, another €3 billion" without even bothering to target the measures. Under Sinn Féin's plan, the Deputy would get an energy credit. He does not need an energy credit. Sinn Féin has not even done the level of detailed policy work-----
Sentiment score: 0.17
Every week with the Deputy, it is another emergency budget. He wants to spend a surplus that would not even exist if he was in power. We are acting. The Deputy is making it up.
Sentiment score: -0.10
Deputy Doherty is making it up as he goes along-----
Sentiment score: 0.00
-----and it is more about the tensions in Sinn Féin than here in Parliament.
Sentiment score: -0.45
I join with Deputy Gannon in acknowledging the huge sense of trauma, fear, disgust and shock being felt in the community of Ballymun and by people right across this country, but nowhere more acutely than in Ballymun. As the Deputy rightly said, on 28 April, a man armed with a handgun was seen near Ballymun Garda station where a second man was being detained. Both are suspected of being involved in an ongoing feud. Gardaí approached the man with the firearm. He ran away, was pursued and threw the gun into bushes as he made his escape. That gun was then subsequently picked up and fired by a child of around 11 years of age. Thank God, nobody was injured in the shooting, but as the Deputy says, it was for the grace of God that nobody was injured. A short time later, two men arrived on an electric bike and took the gun away but the weapon has still not been recovered in spite of intensive searches by gardaí, including armed units. I am conscious that two males were subsequently arrested - a man in his 20s and a teenager - in connection with the incident and both have been detained under section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act. That is law and order. When a crime or an alleged crime is carried out, people should be detained, arrested and questioned. I believe the man in his 20s is still being questioned in connection with the incident while the teenager has been released without charge, pending a file being issued to the Director of Public Prosecutions. I know that the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, has been briefed by the Garda on the circumstances concerning the incident in Ballymun. I am obviously aware that there have been arrests and I do not want to comment too much on that part, but I join with the Deputy and everyone else in this House in asking anybody with any information in connection with the investigation to come forward either to the local Garda station in Ballymun or to the Garda confidential line where any information they have will be treated with the utmost confidence. I want to say to the community in Ballymun that at the end of February, 268 gardaí were assigned to Ballymun district. Of those,160 were assigned to Ballymun Garda station. Since 2024, 34 probational gardaí have been assigned to Ballymun. To tackle some of the deep-rooted issues that have existed over many years in the community, the Ballymun Implementation Board was established in 2024 by my colleague, the former Minister for justice, Deputy McEntee. The board is led by an independent chair, hosted by Dublin City Council and brings together relevant social services, providers and the Garda to work together with community leaders and local business leaders. We have provided funding of €200,000 through the Department of justice to help with the running of the board. It would be useful for us to have further engagement with it as a Government in terms of concrete steps that we can take. We changed the law with regard to children being coerced into crime. For anybody to solicit or coerce a child is a particularly disgusting and heinous crime. While the Deputy makes the point this is often the most deprived communities in Ireland, drug use is often not in those most deprived areas. It is happening in so-called middle-class areas - middle Ireland - where people are snorting a line of coke at the weekend, not thinking of the devastating consequences it is having on communities, and that action should be called out too.
Sentiment score: -0.19
We do.
Sentiment score: 0.00
First, I fully appreciate the Deputy is making a point that is broader than Ballymun. I just wanted to acknowledge the trauma in Ballymun and point out there is a structure there that Government should harness to try to support the community at this time of particular acute challenge. We have taken a number of initiatives to try to tackle deprivation in the country. I can think of one as recently as last month, with the rollout of DEIS plus, targeting schools in our communities that are not just the most disadvantaged but the most disadvantaged within those most disadvantaged. The Deputy is right on the broader point of something going on in society. It is not just in a certain small number of communities. Drug use is now widespread. I hope we can join across the political divide in making that point but there needs to be an understanding in society, in everyone's home, in every community, pub and social setting in Ireland that the taking of illegal drugs in your community is not a victimless crime. Somewhere along that chain, before you snorted that line of coke or took that pill, there was potentially a child being brought into a life of crime. We cannot avoid or sugar-coat that anymore by just thinking this is an issue confined to certain communities. Nearly all communities are now complicit in this harm and we need to have a much less tolerant approach to the casual taking of drugs.
Sentiment score: -0.12
I thank Deputy Coppinger for raising this issue and this case again, and I say that sincerely. I know the intense and constructive ways in which she has been engaging to try to support this student. I say that before I say the next piece, which is I am genuinely not 100% sure how to answer this question, for the reason that I am conscious, based on what she has told me now and what she has said previously in this House, that there are parts of this that may require due process. There are very clear laws in this country, quite rightly, regarding rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual violence. An Garda Síochána are the people who enforce those laws and no part of Irish society, no matter what kind of governing structure anybody has or academic autonomy or anything else, is independent of or separate from those laws. I need to be very conscious of that, and I am not being in any way critical of the Deputy, but when it comes to referring to a rapist or a rape victim, there are places outside of the Dáil where, quite rightly, importantly and appropriately, those issues should be determined and established. I join the Deputy in commending all the students who stood up and spoke up for zero tolerance when it comes to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. The Deputy made the point that it was not just women or female students at that protest but it was also men because men cannot recuse themselves from this huge epidemic in Ireland as regards sexual violence. I fully agree with her in a broad sense that every college, workplace and educational setting has an absolute duty to be a safe environment. I remember from my own time as Minister for higher education a significant body of work that was under way in the universities in that regard. Therefore, I am concerned and disappointed - and it is an understatement - to hear some of what the Deputy has told me here today. I am conscious the Deputy has also said some of this is not straightforward in terms of the academic piece. I acknowledge that and I know the Minister, Deputy Lawless, had an engagement with the student, quite properly, on foot of the Deputy raising this issue here. I will speak to the Minister again and perhaps there is an opportunity to engage with the governing authority as well as the college. I will ask the Minister to come back to Deputy Coppinger directly. The final thing I will say is that this House has quite rightly taken serious action in recent years on the sharing of intimate images, or indeed even the threat of sharing intimate images under Coco's Law. That law is very clear and robust on that and I expect the laws of this land to be applied without fear or favour. Clearly, if there are any breaches, complaints or allegations of a breach of that, An Garda Síochána should investigate it fully.
Sentiment score: 0.03
I am not in any way, shape or form undermining or implying any doubt in regard to what the victim has said to the Deputy and others. I am simply respecting the role I have versus the roles others have in society. There are obviously processes outside of here that have to establish fact. I do not say that to be in any way lacking in empathy; it is just to be factual. On the broader point the Deputy makes around the Minister and asking whether the Minister can provide any further assistance, guidance or linkages with the governing authorities, it is certainly a point I will discuss with the Minister, Deputy Lawless. I know the Minister already met with the student and was eager to do so. A broader point I want to make - I made this point when I was Minister for higher education - is that there is an epidemic of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence in Irish society. Our colleges and universities are not immune from that and, therefore, there was a very strict programme of action that they were all meant to undertake. To hear the Deputy - and I accept she said it in good faith - use the word "performative" is something I know none of us would like to ever see, so I will ask the Minister to reflect on that broader point too.
Sentiment score: 0.06
I thank Deputy Collins. I join with him in wishing Brigid McGlynn all the very best. I was not aware of that. I say it from a position of affection and respect that she has been part of the furniture around here in all the time I have been here. She is quite an institution in and of her own and I wish her and her family all the very best, and indeed the best, as the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins tells me, with their Dublin Hills goat's cheese venture as well. I wish her all the very best and every health. I thank Deputy Collins for acknowledging the package that has been put in place. We can always have a debate in this House around more, and we should, and what else can be done. The package we have put in place for farmers, fishers, farm contractors and hauliers, and the engagement we will have with contractors in the construction sector, is all an effort to recognise that, yes, a fuel and energy crisis impacts everybody in our country but there are some sectors of society and some industries that are heavily dependent on fuel and that it has a greater impact on. I welcome the generally broad welcome that there has been across those industries for these packages. Of course, it is important we keep them kind of simple and non-bureaucratic and that we get payments out as quickly as possible. I am pleased that the farm scheme will open, I think, next Tuesday as well. I already referenced in an earlier engagement the report of the ESRI, a report we commissioned. We commissioned it as a Government because we always want to monitor what can be done in this area. It did find the fuel allowance to be effective and it talked about targeted measures. That is why I think the trajectory we are on, under the leadership of the Minister, Deputy Calleary, of expanding the fuel allowance, making sure more people than ever before are accessing it and the increases to it in recent years are all measures that make real differences to people. I have been in the homes of many people where they will tell you the difference that makes as well. I welcome the fact that the Deputy has also referenced what more we can do. He would be the first to remind us that there are certain sectors of society that it is harder to transition away from diesel and fossil fuel. I get that, but there are also lots of people in the Deputy's constituency and mine who are trying to do the right thing by their own home and their own lives to save a few bob too. We have already made a number of changes to try to help people with electric vehicles, EVs, solar panels, windows, doors and heat pumps. In fact, the changes made by the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, only in recent weeks are already seeing a big benefit. There has been about 186% of an increase in people looking for home upgrade grants. I have made the point - and the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, myself and everybody in Government shares this point - that we have to be constantly restless to do more in this space. One of the areas we are looking at in the time ahead, as well as having discussions about what we can do in the here and now to help people with the bills, is whether there is more we can help people do to break that cycle around being so reliant on fossil fuels and being in homes that can sometimes be cold, drafty or the likes. In the next couple of weeks, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, will be updating Cabinet on the work of the national energy affordability task force. In addition to that, my Department of Finance is doing some work on energy economics and what the right levers are to pull to try to address energy poverty. I will be very happy to update the Deputy when we have those two pieces of work completed.
Sentiment score: 0.44
I would make a couple of points on the surplus. First, it is better to have one than not have one, and it has enabled us to bring in a €750 million package of supports, one of the largest in the European Union, and not have to borrow for it. If you look at our nearest neighbours in the UK, they brought in a smaller package for their citizens per head of population. They had to borrow and were charged around 5% on the market for that as well. We are using the fact that we have a fiscal buffer to the advantage of our citizens in being able to have a larger package in place but also not having to borrow and pay interest for that package as well. To reassure people, I would also make the point that the €9.4 billion is not sitting in the Department of Finance getting dusty. This is a projection as to what we believe the surplus could be by the end of the year. It has not come in yet. This is the month of April; it is what we believe the surplus could be by 31 December. I think that sometimes gets missed in this debate. There is not €9.4 billion of a surplus sitting over there now. The third point I would make, and I say this respectfully, is that in the past perhaps people talked of rainy day funds. We do not have any such fund in Ireland any more. We have two funds that are very clearly actively being used, one around infrastructure, climate adaptation, capital projects, metro potentially and for other things, and another called the Future Ireland Fund, for demographics, including a population that is going to get older in the Deputy's constituency and mine. We do have options in terms of being able to do more in the time ahead but the politics and the facts of the surplus are a little more complicated than is sometimes presented.
Sentiment score: 0.18