Taoiseach Micheál Martin has rejected calls for an emergency or mini-budget as the Opposition called for a further package to deal with the ongoing energy crisis.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald renewed her party’s call for an emergency budget, a “permanent USC cut that puts €500 back in workers’ pockets”, energy credits for households, a €500 payment for people with disabilities and “a suite of measures to protect the most vulnerable”.
She said what was needed from Government “was quick, decisive action to provide people with real relief, to give working households certainty for the time ahead”.
“However, it’s only when public anger grows that you move twice. You have come to the table twice. You have gotten it badly wrong, half measures each time.”
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She said there “are practical steps that can be taken right now to make a real difference, to lift some of the pressure people are under, to make ends meet”.
Martin said she was calling for something for everybody but what the Sinn Féin leader announced “could be €4 billion or €5 billion. You didn’t cost it.”
The Government had allocated €750 million “and there’s a budget in October”. He said “we don’t have money in the bottom of the drawer like you’re suggesting”.
Much of the surplus is in the Future Ireland Funds, he said. The money has been put aside and a lot of it is being invested “unless you’re advocating it be taken out of the funds”.
The Taoiseach told Labour leader Ivana Bacik “we will not be introducing a mini-budget” when she called for one after describing the Government’s response as “not a coherent plan”.
There was no strategy and it was a “series of ad hoc measures” that appear to be “cobbled together in response to political pressure”.
She said the Government is playing “whack-a-mole” and claimed “you’ve no clear vision for how to support working families through this deepening cost of living and energy crisis”.
She added: “Would it not be more honest to call your response what it is, a mini budget, but released in segments.”
The Government had withdrawn energy credits “without putting any cushion in place for households. You failed to index tax bands as Labour had sought. You’ve left PAYE workers footing the bill for sectoral pay-offs”.
There was also “no evidence” VAT cuts “will achieve anything other than costing the Exchequer. And now, as inflation threatens to surge again, the Finance Minister is kite flying ... people see through this.”
“If you are doing a mini-budget in all but name why not bring forward a coherent package of concrete proposals?,” she asked.
Insisting there would be no mini-budget the Taoiseach said “we have taken the strategic approach”. They were looking at the medium-term impacts on economic life and not just the immediate impacts.
“There is general relief in terms of the reductions in excise on diesel and petrol” which benefits everyone, he said.
Government had taken a “targeted approach in terms of families on low incomes” with the extension of the fuel allowance. He said they had been strategic on everything to do with food production as well as on the broader haulage, logistics, supply industry, “which is critical for all of us”.
As a small island exporting 90 per cent of its food production “it’s essential that the logistics supply chain haulage is enabled to do its business and assisted in doing that in terms of the measures that we’re bringing in”.
The package approved by Government on Tuesday as part of the €750 million in supports will mean a lot for hauliers, fishers, farmers, contractors and the general public, he said.
