Across the State there are families standing in cold kitchens looking at empty oil tanks. Workers are seeing the fuel gauge drop on the school run unsure of how they are going to pay for the next fill as prices at the pump spin out of control. For four long weeks, ordinary people watched with increasing anxiety while prices skyrocketed with the price of diesel up 55% and home heating oil, which was the source of the largest number of complaints I received in the constituency of Kerry, doubling in costs. One bill I saw went from €473 to over €800 in the matter of a week or so. Meanwhile, the Government sat and twiddled its thumbs monitoring the situation. In truth, the Government was perfectly content to ride this one out leaving workers and families high and dry. However, relentless pressure and massive public anger forced it to act. The package had to be dragged out of the Government yet the Minister has come to the table with only half measures. Once again, the Government has failed to back the people. It has failed to provide the maximum support that people needed and demanded. This is a political choice - a choice to abandon millions of workers and families crippled under the weight of this crisis, a choice to offer tokenism when real support was needed and a choice that tells ordinary people exactly whose side this Government is on. It is definitely not theirs. While people cannot afford to heat their homes, the Government sits on a €12.5 billion surplus. While the cost of fuel has gone through the roof, the Government's tax take rises with it because, as the Minister knows, 60% to 65% of every litre goes straight to the Exchequer. When ordinary families came knocking, the cupboard was bare. However, as we saw in the budget when the bankers and the developers came knocking, there was never a shortage. All of this comes on top of a cost-of-living crisis that was crushing people even before fuel prices spiked. A total of 320,000 people and rising cannot pay their electricity bills. Arrears are growing every month. People are choosing between heating and food. Workers are trapped in cars that they cannot afford to fill because there is no alternative. We see that one third of the grants for electric vehicles are given to cars that are worth €55,000 or more and over half are given to cars that cost €40,000 or more. If someone can afford to buy a car that is worth €55,000, he or she does not need an untargeted measure or if it is targeted, it is targeted at people who can afford it. The answer here was a four-week extension to the fuel allowance, a measure that the Government's figures show cannot keep pace with rising costs. Families needed a government of action, but they got a do-nothing government that hoped the crisis would simply blow over. The 2 cent cut on home heating oil is particularly insulting. It is a slap in the face to the 750,000 households that have seen their prices more than double in the past few weeks. A lot of them are more rural houses, one-off houses and houses that are owned by people who are older. Of all the Government's half-baked measures in response to the crisis, this is the biggest failure because households are now forced to fork out over €1,700 for a tank of home heating oil and all the Government offers them is a temporary reprieve of €20. If this was not insulting enough, the Government is pulling a fast one and taking the public for fools. The 2 cent reduction will be completely wiped out by yet another hike in the regressive carbon tax. Earlier, the Taoiseach said that he does not know what our policy is on that. He obviously has not been monitoring the news too closely over the past year or so. The Government is giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Those who rely on home heating oil to keep warm, many of them in my own county, have been completely abandoned. You would think that the people of Kerry could rely on some of the loudest critics of the carbon tax during the previous Dáil term to have their back but this is not the case. After all, the carbon tax is neither ring-fenced nor is it a behavioural measure, as the Comptroller and Auditor General report stated as did the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI. There was a better and fairer way. We gave the solutions. We have been consistently giving them, including remove all excise on home heating oil, which will save €182 on a €1,000 fill, cut petrol and diesel by the maximum permissible amount, extend the fuel allowance by 13 weeks, not the paltry four, scrap the carbon tax increases, and deliver proper, fair, accessible climate action to address our over-reliance on imported fossil fuels and achieve Irish energy independence by seizing on our incredible renewable potential. A just transition does not equate to regressive taxes that punish people who have no alternative. These are affordable and responsible proposals. It is simply not true to say that our proposals on carbon tax would mean no money for retrofitting. Every year in our alternative budget, Sinn Féin's shows how the Government could invest more in retrofitting without punishing people who have no other choice. Our fairer retrofitting plan also had targeted measures at those who needed it the most, rather than having it be the preserve of those with considerable means. There is no just transition if ordinary people are locked out of it and punished as a result. Sinn Féin showed how there could be meaningful interventions, but the Government chose not to listen. The Government then told people in the South what it cannot do. It tried to deflect blame onto Sinn Féin in the North where we do not have control of excise duty, do not control taxation and where the Westminster cuts have gutted public services for over a decade. That is absurd. If the Government wants to address a united Ireland in a meaningful way, it could go about it, but it clearly is not. Sinn Féin will continue to demand meaningful action, not tokenism or half measures.

Sentiment score: -0.07