The price of home heating oil has shot up by 85% in recent weeks. Last month, the price of 1,000 litres of home heating oil was about €950. This week is retailing for €1,750. This country saw the biggest increase in home heating oil in the whole of the EU. Very few families have the colour of €1,750 lying around the house. Hard-working families, nurses, teachers, gardaí and small business owners simply do not have that money available at any one time. One nurse contacted my office and said she has not been able to refuel her home because of the price of it and her family is simply going to bed early to keep warm at night-time. She said that the family do not smoke or drink. They do not go out and do not get takeaways. She said she is embarrassed because she cannot afford the basic necessities for her children at the moment.

She is not alone. At the moment about 2 million people across the country are dependent on home heating oil. In the likes of counties Donegal, Sligo and Leitrim, there is no connection at all to the national gas grid and as a result, many of these homes are locked into that fuel source. What did the Government do for these families? It took 2 cent off a litre of home heating oil. In the jaws of an energy crisis when home heating oil has increased to record levels, the Government’s amazing solution to this has been to drop the price of a litre of home heating oil by 2 cent. A fill has gone from €1,750 to €1,730. It is an atrocious insult to hard-working families in this country. It is an absolute disgrace but it is not the full picture either here because in a few weeks, the Government plans to raise the price of a litre of home heating oil by 2 cent. In the teeth of this hardship on families, the net results of its tax actions in a month will be to marginally increase the tax on home heating oil in this country.

Families are crushed by this energy crisis. Small businesses are going to the wall. Carers cannot afford to drive to mind the people they care for. Workers cannot fill their tanks to get to work. Farmers are actually seeing their costs spike while the price of their produce is falling, and the Government’s policy is to increase the net tax on home heating oil. The heart of the problem here is that the Government’s plan is to increase taxes on fuel. For sure, the war in Iran has accelerated hardship on families but the Government was taking 65% in tax on a litre of petrol and diesel before the war. Some 320,000 families were in energy arrears before the war. The price of electricity in this country was at the highest in Europe before the war. The painful reality is the Government is tax gouging families. The question I have for the Taoiseach is: will the Government cut carbon tax on home heating oil?

The Deputy’s assessment is not correct in the sense that he ignored the extension of the fuel allowance for four weeks, which will help about 470,000 people to deal with the rise in the price of home heating oil. There is no doubt that there is huge pressure on families and people across the country. The price of home heating oil has increased very significantly because of the war, not because of what the Government did. The price shock that is occurring because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as well as the bombing of gas and oil installations in Iran and in the Gulf states. That is the fundamental cause of the current crisis. It still has not reached the levels that we reached at the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine when we also had an oil price and energy crisis.

Government has to act. This is March and we have another winter to come. We do not quite know what is around the corner and what measures might be required from Government in response to potentially a further deterioration in the future. Hopefully this war ends very quickly; it should end very quickly. That is what we want but we do not know what might happen in respect of that. We also have to prepare for a budget and keep our resources in reserve.

I know the Deputy is against the carbon tax; I think he would abolish it in total.

When prices are surging it is not-----

Yes, he would. Honesty is what we want here because the Government would then need to find €1 billion to do what the Deputy wants us to do. That means taking money from farmers. It means taking money from the retrofitting programme because we would not be able to do the retrofitting programme without it. The retrofitting programme helps people to reduce their costs over time and is a far more effective energy-efficient approach to the allocation of resources. About €173 million this year will come from that fund and go to farmers across the country. The Opposition will say, “Don’t do that. Find the money elsewhere.” We also have to try to invest in education, health, children and disability for the next budget. We want to maintain existing levels of public service but also increase them. This morning, we announced the DEIS plus scheme, which allocated further resources to the schools most in need and with huge challenges. It affects about 120 schools and also provides more home-school liaison. We want to make a reserve to make sure we improve services for everybody in the country.

Yesterday’s allocation of about €250 million is probably the largest package across Europe. The fuel allowance is a good, targeted measure that helps about 470,000 families, which will help them with their home heating oil expenses. The general reduction in petrol and diesel prices will definitely help families across the length and breadth of the country. We also have the reduction in the NORA levy. The Deputy cannot just isolate one from the other; they will all help to some degree.

First, working families do not get the fuel allowance. The working families that I am talking about who are in energy crisis at the moment are suffering significantly from this. Second, the war in Iran is a shocking situation, which has had an enormous effect on the price of fuel but Government taxes have a larger effect on the price of fuel. The majority of the price of diesel, 65%, comes from taxes at the moment. The Taoiseach spoke about the Government’s €250 million package. He should look at it like this. The Government has actually taken in about €140 million in extra taxes because of VAT going up on the higher prices in the past four weeks. Carbon taxes will take in an extra €160 million over the rest of the year. When the two are put together, the Government’s package is smaller than the extra taxes it will take this year. That is an incredible situation. It does not need the carbon taxes at the moment to retrofit. It squirrelled away €10 billion in windfall taxes last year. The Government could use some of that money to invest in retrofitting homes to bring down the cost of deep retrofitting from €40,000 to a lower amount so that people could actually afford it.

The Deputy is wrong in his assessment of the Government’s increase in revenue.

It is €40 million a week.

That is absolutely wrong. The Deputy is raising the general issue of taxation overall. He cannot have both ways. What he is really advocating for is a cut in public services.

No.

Of course he is because if you reduce taxes on one front, you are reducing your revenue and resources to pay for public services in education, health-----

Fuel taxes are not progressive and hurt low-income families most.

The Taoiseach, without interruption.

However, they are a revenue source. The Deputy would either increase income tax or increase taxes elsewhere – he should tell us what he would do - to offset-----

Progressive taxes.

------the significant reduction in excise duty that he is proposing because he would have to find the money from somewhere. We cannot have everything we want. We cannot have our cake and eat it, which seems to be the Deputy’s response. The Government is targeting its resources and 50,000 extra families on the working family payment are in receipt of the fuel allowance. We introduced that in the latest budget and they will gain from the extension of the fuel allowance. He is wrong in saying that working families will not benefit from that.

The Taoiseach knows that most working families are not in receipt of that.