Electricity credits must be included in next Budget, Tánaiste told on Dáil's last day

Irish Independent

2 days ago

Pearse Doherty of Sinn Féin said the number of people in arrears on their electricity bills has risen by 63,000 in the first four months of this year.
There are now 175,000 people in arrears on electricity and 300,000 "not able to pay the gas bill," Mr Doherty said.
People needed help to heat their homes and keep the lights on, he told Fine Gael leader Simon Harris. "I say you have all the wrong priorities."
But the Tánaiste, speaking on the Dáil's last day before the summer recess, said: "You'd probably have to go back a very long time to find a summer recess in which we have seen a moment of greater economic uncertainty."
He told Mr Doherty: "You don't want to talk about trade. You don't want to talk about tariffs. You don't want to talk about the 48,000 people who work in pharma in this country. You don't want to talk about the global uncertainty.
"You've never seen something you don't want to spend more money on. But we have to be honest with the Irish people, we can't just keep saying, 'spend, spend, spend'."
Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore said the Government was "reckless and feckless" with the people's money and wanted to blame the Opposition for its own failures.
Tanaiste Simon Harris asked her to name one benefit the Social Democrats wanted to cancel in order to save money.
He said the Government was trying to make sure that people and working families can keep working "by protecting their jobs at this dangerous, dangerous moment".
On the Budget, he said: "The on-off measures served a purpose at a time of extraordinarily high inflation." But the Government had made clear, ahead of the last election, that it couldn't last, he added.
ADVERTISEMENT
He told Mr Doherty: "We will support families, but we're also going to support the economy, something you don't like talking about very often."
Ms Whitmore said the State had never had so much money come into its coffers as in the last fourteen years, "and we have very little to show for it".
Mr Harris said he did not agree with that analysis, saying he had stood alongside Ms Whitmore, his constituency colleague, at many a ribbon-cutting for new facilities in Wicklow. There had been record investment across the country, he said.
Mr Doherty said: "Your plan is to cancel the energy credits that people so desperately need and relied on.
"You dig in and you continue to refuse to agree for a cost of living package in October's budget. And of course, there's those on fixed incomes who are at greater risk of poverty and they need greater support.
"But this ever worsening cost of living crisis has widened significantly. More and more families, more and more working people, are struggling to get by, and even families with two incomes find it harder than ever to keep up with the bills.
"They out of control. Prices across the board are pushing households to the brink," Mr Doherty said.
"It's not lost on these families that they are being hammered by rip-off prices and electricity and gas while these same energy companies are recording bumper profits.
"The ESB recorded operating profits of over a billion euiro in 2023 and similar to that again last year. And SSE Electricity made hundreds of millions of profits in both of the last two years."