You would not know from the last two weeks of grudge politics between Fine Gael and Sinn Féin but the crises that are besetting the people of Ireland at the moment have not gone away whatsoever. Some 80% of the people of this State are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis. That seems to have been forgotten about by the political establishment. Figures provided to me by the Minister for Finance show that the Government is profiting in terms of VAT from the crisis. Last year, the Government received more in VAT on fuel and energy than ever before when many families are living on overdrafts and many more are in hock to moneylenders. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party are taking more in VAT and fuel taxes than they did in any previous year. The VAT on electricity last year reached record heights of €381 million.

People struggling to pay for the heating of their homes pay 40% more on VAT on electricity last year than the previous year. Hard-pressed motorists are paying 30% more on petrol than they did in the previous year. Diesel is 20% more. Cumulatively, they have spent €700 million on VAT on those two fuel sources. VAT on gas and oil and solid fuel is reaching record highs. That is before we even talk about the Government's imposition of carbon taxes. Yes, the Government gave a few bob back but it pilfered that money from people's pockets in the first place.

Many people are looking nervously at the planned increase in fuel excise duty that the Government plans for February. The Minister has stood before us many times and said there is nothing more that this Government can do to help people with the crisis in the cost of living but there is. What is said is patently untrue. The Government could do what the Spanish Government did and stop hammering people and reduce the VAT on fuel. Will the Minister categorically say there will be no rise in fuel excise in February?

Another issue which is hitting people really hard in their pockets is that of mortgage interest rates. People are struggling to pay them now. Most mortgage holders will be paying far more in the next year. European Central Bank rate rises mean that tracker mortgage holders will have to fork out an additional €3,000 on their mortgages on average. However, the people who are most hammered are the 100,000 mortgage holders who have been sold out to the vulture funds. Families in the grip of those vulture funds will be paying rates of as high as 7% and they will not be able to lock into fixed rates. This is a two-tier mortgage market. It was created by the last Government and it is presided over by this one. Some 100,000 families are now second-class citizens among mortgage holders. They have no protection from profiteering mortgage vulture funds.

Thank you, Deputy. Time is up.

This cohort suffered most in the housing crisis and now it is most exposed to the increases in interest rates. What will the Government do to protect these families?

Nearly a year ago, Vladimir Putin sent his tanks into Kyiv and set the world ablaze by putting energy prices through the roof. They had already risen because he had been turning off the tap deliberately in advance and using energy as a weapon of war. The inflation that resulted and the cost-of-living crisis that came from that was unprecedented, probably since the early 1970s and the oil-price crisis. Any independent economic analysis of any credit or note would assess that this Government's response in the last year protected our people. It did not adopt some of the populist politics that the Tories and others here argued for, which would undermine the economic credibility of the State and its ability to protect the people. What we were able to do this by reducing excise duty, VAT, public transport fares and the cost of childcare, by providing each household with €800 upfront credit payments, by increasing social welfare payments both in once-off and permanent rises in payments, by introducing restrictions and moratoriums on cutting off energy supply and other measures. I could go on. There was a whole range of measures that the ESRI and others have analysed and said that we got it right and that we have protected the most vulnerable in particular in this incredible and unprecedented time. We do not know what will happen in the coming year. Please God, that war will come to an end. We have said clearly that we will continue to protect our people but we should not go down the route of populist solutions where we say we will never raise another tax and we will not reverse any of the VAT cuts. In the end that would lead us to a position where our economy would not be sound and we would not be able to protect and provide for our people into the future. In that populist route lies real danger.

There is a responsibility on Government to ensure the basic economic protection of the State's finances so that we can provide the measures when we needs them. We did it during the Covid pandemic and we unwound the measures in a way that worked. That is what we will do again this spring and what we will need to do.

We will be attentive if circumstances change. We will keep an eye on international prices. We must keep an eye on what the economy is doing, on employment and on people's welfare. I refer to false simple promises that we would never reverse a single measure and that we would not do what we did during Covid, namely, bring in big supports and appropriately withdraw them, although not off a cliff edge, to which we are all committed and on which we are all agreed. We would not do this on the never-never, where it is put off and at every local election and general election to come, we would say we will not do it now because it will be politically unpopular. That reckless way would really endanger our people and the protection of our people which is what we want to do.

I do not know what question the Minister answered but he did not answer my question. Putin does not set the VAT rates in this State. Putin does not regulate the vulture funds in this State. In those two aspects, he is irrelevant to the conversation. The electricity credit is less than all the increases in all the fuel and energy taxes in the last year. The Government has taken more money out of people's pockets than it has given back with the electricity credit.

On mortgages, the vulture funds bought them at bargain basement prices. They should have a lower cost base but they are putting families to the pins of their collars. They are pushing many families into arrears. Maybe that is what they want; maybe they want to crystallise their investments now when prices are so high. The Government said people would be protected. Yesterday I asked the Governor of the Central Bank what levers the Central Bank had to protect families being charged 7% by vulture funds. He said they have none. That is the key issue. What will the Government do to help those families? Will it regulate those vulture funds and maybe even put a super-normal profit tax on those vulture funds in the same way that has been done to energy companies? What will it do about VAT and the protection of mortgage holders?

That is the job of the Central Bank.

The regulation of law is set by the Government.

The Central Bank is the regulator.

The Government -----

No, please stop this.

We set the broad policy context around not having consumers ripped off but that is the mandate of the Central Bank.

There are 2,000 people there with real expertise in the area and a clear mandate from Government to say we do not want anyone exploiting or getting an undue profit or an unduly high interest rate. That is their job. If we started to become the regulator again, where would that end? That got us into a lot of trouble in the past where people thought the political system could do the job of the Central Bank. It does not work

That is because Government does not do regulation

I will try to deal with the Deputy's prime question on energy supports. Those electricity credits have been well timed and well placed. They particularly have helped families in default or at risk of default and not able to pay their bills. Each time they have kicked in, we have seen a dramatic drop in the number of families at most stress. Therefore, it has been exactly the right measure.

By contrast, at the time there was talk about all sorts of weird caps which were completely uncertain and would not have delivered functional support. The energy credit has not been the only one. It has come with all the other measures - about 12 by my count. We need to wean off those and do it in a balanced way, subject to what happens in the war.