Can we extend a very warm welcome to Margaret Loftus, who is in the Public Gallery and is appearing before the justice committee today? The Taoiseach has published his spring economic forecast and it tells a very clear story. The Government expects the State's surplus to grow from €5 billion to over €9 billion, meaning billions more flowing into the Exchequer. The Government is taking in billions more, yet people cannot afford to heat their homes. People cannot pay their electricity bills. It is as though there are two different realities in this country: one in the Taoiseach's forecast of growth and surpluses and another at kitchen tables across the land, where there are cold homes, mounting bills and real fear. The energy crisis is not easing; it is intensifying. Electricity prices are forecast to rise again and the Taoiseach's own Ministers warn of increases of up to 9% in the months ahead. We saw repeated hikes last year and now more are coming. More than 300,000 households are already in arrears on their energy bills, yet the Taoiseach's response is not to act but to comment, not to intervene but to observe. It is as if the Government is a spectator in this crisis rather than a government responsible for fixing it. Over 750,000 households rely on home heating oil, and their bills have doubled in a matter of weeks. Last week, my colleague an Teachta Pearse Doherty spoke about a young working couple, both in employment, who have gone three weeks without heat because they cannot afford it. They did everything right. They have worked hard, studied and built their lives and still they cannot heat their homes. Families now face rising school transport costs and the return of junior and leaving certificate fees. That is what the Government is bringing to people's doors. It has scrapped energy credits and refused even to cut carbon tax on home heating oil when people needed relief most. While pressure mounts, the Government pulls supports. The moment households need help, it steps back. When intervention is required, it chooses inaction. Now it seems its message is that things will get worse and it will look at it again in October. That is six months away. This is exactly what the Government did last year. It delayed and waited and when October's budget did come, its decisions actually left people worse off, so here we go again. On the one hand, the Government talks of rising prices and further shocks while on the other, it tells people to struggle on and wait. That is unacceptable. The Government has been warned about soaring energy costs and has been told that its measures are inadequate and that people need real intervention but it did not listen. This failure is not confined to energy. We see it in housing. This weekend, figures show eviction notices surging since the Government's rent hike Bill came in - exactly as we warned. People see the same pattern. The Government does not listen, it delays and it makes the wrong calls and ordinary people pay the price. On the back of the Government's spring economic statement today, the question is simple. With billions more available to it, why does the Government choose not to act for people who cannot heat their homes or meet their electricity bills? How does it justify refusing to act on the cost of home heating oil while prices remain so high? Why does it refuse to introduce energy credits when people desperately need them? Why does it not bring forward meaningful cost-of-living supports?
Sentiment score: -0.09
That is guff, plain and simple. The Taoiseach has given us a catalogue of his own failures. On housing, the metro and infrastructure, it is fail, fail, fail on his part. Now, as we learn that the projected surplus will grow from €5.1 billion to more than €9 billion, the Taoiseach has the poor mouth for struggling families. That is all he is offering. I do not know if the Taoiseach thinks that people live lives of fiction. I want him to hear very clearly that families are struggling now, today, in the here and now. Part of our economic resilience, and the health of our economy and our society, has to be to intervene when families are struggling. You do not leave them in the lurch. You do not leave hundreds of thousands of people unable to meet their electricity bills, or hundreds of thousands of people struggling to pay for their home heating oil. There is an obligation on the Government to listen, to hear and to intervene. Why will it not do that, with all of these additional billions that are now projected?
Sentiment score: -0.23
They do not have lower bills.
Sentiment score: 0.22
You do not live in the real world.
Sentiment score: 0.00
You do not live in the real world.
Sentiment score: 0.00