I begin by extending, on behalf of Sinn Féin, my condolences on the passing of South Belfast MLA, Christopher Stalford, to Christopher's wife, Laura, to his four children, his family, friends and colleagues in the DUP. Our thoughts and prayers are with them as they grieve his loss.

Tá dhá tuairisc a fhoilsíodh an tseachtain seo a chaitheann síos go mór ar fhreagra an Rialtais seo maidir le géarchéim na gcostas maireachtála chun solais. Is í an fhírinne ná nach bhfuil go leor á dhéanamh. Tá páistí ar an líne bhochtaineachta anois mar gheall ar chostais atá ag ardú.

Children face the sharp edge of the cost-of-living crisis. Barnardos Ireland has published a report which states that one quarter of families fear they will not be able to feed their kids as the price of groceries soars. Barnardos CEO, Suzanne Connolly, has stated families are running out earlier due to increasing costs. She has said the situation is now very serious for low- and middle-income families. In its Report Card 2022, published yesterday, the Children's Rights Alliance awarded the Government a grade E to reflect the increasing number of children experiencing homelessness. Extortionate rents that ordinary families cannot afford are a key driver in this scandal.

The package announced by Government does not go far enough. It barely scratches the surface. It is not just me or Sinn Féin telling the Government this. Barnardos, St. Vincent de Paul, Social Justice Ireland and other organisations are all saying the same thing. The Government could have made better choices. It could have acted as Sinn Féin proposed. It could have cut rents and banned increases, but it did not. It could have cut childcare costs. It did not do that. It could have expanded and extended the fuel allowance. It did not do that either. It could have provided a cost-of-living cash payment to individuals. Again, it refused to do so. A one-off energy credit paid in March or April is better than nothing, but it will not make a dent when people are paying thousands to light and heat their homes. Last month, gas demand rose by 11% as temperatures dropped. At the weekend, Sinn Féin activists were out engaging with communities. People were coming to their doors with energy bills that were so high they described them as the straw that would finally break their backs.

What is the Government response to all of this hardship? First, the Taoiseach is telling people that no further help is coming from the Government and that they will have to wait at least seven months for the budget. You are on your own, is the message from the Head of Government. Then we have the Tánaiste, Deputy Leo Varadkar, piping up and talking about increasing interest rates, a measure that would not help any families but would heap additional financial pressure on workers and households. Then, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and his Government colleagues plan to go ahead with a carbon tax increase that will make it even more expensive for families to keep their homes warm. To crown it all off, on Wednesday evening, the Government rolled in here and voted to ensure cuckoo funds continue to pay no tax on rental income and no capital gains tax, the very same funds that are gobbling up family homes, making home ownership unaffordable and helping drive rents up, up and up.

The Government needs a reality check. It needs to wake up and understand where ordinary people are at. The Government is living in dreamland if it thinks that people can hang on and wait until next October, when the Government announces next year's budget. Families and children need a far better intervention from Government to bring down the cost of living, and they need it right here, right now. That is what the call is for. Is the Government going to leave them in the lurch or is it going to do as Sinn Féin has asked and act to support those families and children, who so many organisations are saying are being left behind as a result of its policies?

I thank the Deputy for raising once again the very real issue of the cost-of-living pressures people are facing. The Government acknowledges that a lot of people are under real pressure because of the rising cost of living. We all know the reasons the cost of living is increasing. There are external international factors. There are also domestic factors, including the really strong rebound in the Irish economy which has exceeded most expectations. On the external front, undoubtedly the increase in wholesale energy prices and the disruptions in the global supply are having a real impact on the ground.

Of course, people are not that concerned about the reasons. They just know it is hurting them, it is affecting them, and they want to know what we are doing about it. We do note that the most recent data from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, show a moderation in January in the harmonised index of consumer prices, down from 5.7% to 5%. We cannot take too much comfort from that. It is a slight easing and we do not know yet whether that is going to be part of an improvement in the underlying trend or whether it is a one-off. Time will tell in relation to that.

That is why the Government has acted. That is why we acted in the budget last October, when we had an income tax package of more than half a billion euro in respect of reductions in income tax, the burden of which falls on low-income people and on middle-income people. The Sinn Féin proposal in respect of income tax was to increase it by €800 million in the last budget. This Government reduced it by half a billion euro. That is €1.3 billion of a difference in our income tax proposals in the previous budget alone. In addition, we had a social welfare package in the previous budget of more than half a billion euro, much of which was targeted: at the working family payment, the qualified child payment and the living alone allowance, for example - three payments that are generally accepted as being among the most effective tools any government has to tackle the poverty issues that are undoubtedly there. Of course, it was also coupled with increases in the core rates. We acknowledge there is a challenge with fuel prices. That is why we increased the fuel allowance in the budget by €5 immediately on budget night last year. The Sinn Féin proposal was not to increase the fuel allowance at all in the budget last October. That is a fact.

Now, of course, we have gone much further. In recent weeks, we have come forward with a package of more than half a billion euro. Some measures are targeted and some are universal. The targeted measures will include the €125 once-off payment to people on the fuel allowance. Almost 400,000 households will get that payment in the next three weeks. By mid-March, the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Humphreys, plans to have that payment transferred to the people who need it most. A number of the measures we introduced in the budget last October have yet to kick in and these will also help many families, particularly working families and middle-income families, who also are feeling the pressure. In autumn, for example, the improvement in the SUSI grant will come in. There is the improvement in the means test and the qualifying threshold for the student support scheme. The extension of the universal childcare subsidy in relation to older children will also kick in in autumn of this year. The extension by two weeks of parents' benefit will kick in in July. In addition, a number of the other social welfare measures, such as the improvement in the means test for carers, for example, will also come into effect in June.

I represent ordinary people. I get elected by ordinary people. This Government represents ordinary people. We are listening to them. That is why we have responded in the best way we can so far with a set of universal measures but also a set of targeted measures, including those introduced outside of the annual budget. That has just been done, as the Deputy is aware.

The people I speak to who live in this city say they cannot afford €2,000 rents and cannot understand why the Minister and his Government continue to vote against rent freezes. They continue to ask me why the Government will not support the Sinn Féin policy that would put a month’s rent back into renters’ pockets. The people I talk to tell me about the fact that childcare is a second mortgage for many families and that there is a way to cut the cost of childcare but it falls on deaf ears. The people I talk to say the social welfare package the Government introduced in the budget last year does not even keep up with the rate of inflation.

What people want is real action right here, right now. There is a suite of proposals that we put forward. It is a suite of proposals that could help people in terms of the cost of living by giving them direct cash payments. The Government refused to do that. There is the proposal to ban rent increases and put money back into renters’ pockets.

The Government refused to do it. There is the proposal to cut childcare costs. The Government refused to do it. When it comes to last week's vote, however, there is no tax for vulture funds that are making millions of euro on charging the highest rents in the State. These are the ordinary people the Minister is on the side of, because talk is cheap, but when it comes to action the Government is failing to deliver for these families. The Minister should not just take Sinn Féin's word on this. Barnardos, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Social Justice Ireland and the National One Parent Family Alliance are all saying the same thing. The Government needs to understand where people are at.

Hear, hear.

We do understand where people are at. The Deputy is right; talk is cheap. He talks about fuel poverty. Sinn Féin introduced an alternative budget last October that did not increase the fuel allowance by one cent.

That is not true. We increased portions of welfare-----

That is the truth.

The Journal will have more work to do.

The Deputy did that in October of last year. His party published its budget proposals in which there was not a single cent of an increase in the fuel allowance. This Government increased it by €5 on budget night in an unprecedented measure because we recognise the genuine difficulties that people are facing.

The Deputy talks about the carbon tax. He is being duplicitous on the carbon tax and highly disingenuous. He gives people the impression Sinn Féin is against the carbon tax. The only thing his party is against when it comes to the carbon tax is the next increase, whenever that is going to be, because it never proposes to unwind or abolish the carbon tax. Tell people the truth. His party is-----

We did not say we would. Let us stop pushing up energy prices on families.

His party is in favour of the carbon tax and is only ever against the next increase, and that is typical of the cynical politics that his party is pursuing.

We are against pushing up prices on families. What do you only understand about that? Push up gas prices. Push up oil prices.

Perhaps Deputy Doherty might tell people where the €412 million I have ring-fenced this year for fuel poverty measures, for retrofitting and for agri-environmental schemes from carbon tax receipts will come from. It is not there.

I thank the Minister.

What about the vulture funds, Minister?

I call Deputy Shortall.