In 2022, in a modern wealthy republic, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul released a report today entitled, The Cost of Surviving?. There are many shocking findings in the report, but one that stands out for me is the fact that 30% of one-parent family respondents said that due to the rising cost of living they were cutting back on essentials like food. I am sure I am not the only person in the Chamber who has encountered a parent who has had to skip a meal so that a child does not have do. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul has made a series of recommendations for the short, medium and long term. Can the Minister tell me one policy that has been enacted in the suite of measures announced last week that will ensure that a parent in this Republic no longer has to skip a meal? It is a sad indictment of us as a society.

One of the measures announced last week was a change to the rules on school transport. That applies more to rural than urban areas, but it was very much targeted at the parents of young children. There are also changes in prescription charges. In addition, the many parents who cannot afford a car will benefit most from a cut in the cost of public transport. It is very expensive to pay for fares for adults and children, and that starts to hit home. More fundamentally, what was done last week was an adjunct to last October's budget. To go back to my earlier discussion with Deputy Doherty on the framing of the carbon tax, we deliberately designed measures to try to target lone parents, qualified children and the living alone allowance. The fuel allowance is not the only payment that was included. Using carbon tax to pay for some additional targeted measures in the social welfare Bill is one way to help those categories of people.

We are all aware of the controversy surrounding the decision of the National Women's Council of Ireland, NWCI, regarding its platform for the International Women's Day protest on 5 March. We have differing views on it and I do not do not want to go into those views here. However, I seek from the Minister and Government reassurance that the NWCI, or any other NGO which takes a view that is different to that of the Government or takes a decision that the Government does not like, will not have their funding cut or threatened and will instead be protected.

I thank the Deputy. My Department funds the NWCI. This year, we funded it to the tune of €611,000, a 10% increase on last year. We will continue to fund the NWCI and look to continue to grow the level of its funding. My Department and I, as Minister, regularly meet it regarding a wide range of issues, as do many colleagues. We value that working relationship with the NWCI.

Our electricity prices are among the most expensive in Europe, with Irish families paying, on average, €180 extra for electricity annually. This is partly as a result of Irish families being forced to subsidise the cost of electricity, grid connections and backup supplies for existing and already planned speculative data centres. The Government decided in 2018 to stop the practice whereby those struggling to pay electricity bills were subsidising these speculative developers and instead make data centres pay their own costs. When will the Government reduce electricity costs by stopping this data centre subsidy?

We clearly recognise that we have an issue with data centres. We cannot just have an open door whereby every new data centre that wants to get onto the grid is connected. If we did that, we would blow our climate budget and so on. We have introduced much-needed new arrangements. A data centre that wants to connect to the grid has to be part of solving the problem we have with managing the balance in the grid, such as providing backup power, providing a real benefit in terms of district heating or other solutions. Flexibility is required. I will make a point that is central to this issue. The primary reason for our high electricity prices is our dispersed population and grid connection. If we ask any expert analyst why Irish electricity prices are high in comparison to other European countries, it is largely due the fact that we have a different model of development. The dispersed population model is one of the main reasons we have higher costs.

I am referring to the existing system, not the pie in the sky one.