Two weeks from today, the Minister, Deputy Chambers, will deliver his budget and, across the country, people want to know if it will bring down their household bills. They are being subjected to daily budget leaks now. The Minister for Finance cannot help himself, flying kites and doling out goodies, with a morsel here and a soundbite there.

It is like "The Late Late Show" of old; one for everyone in the audience but only if you happen to be in today’s target interest group. So, what will it all add up to? Will it add up? Last year's certainly did not. Will the Minister learn from his mistakes of last year? In last year’s budget, the Government ignored PAYE workers. Now we see union after union voting for strike action. It is extraordinary that the Minister has not yet had any meaningful engagement on public sector pay. Workers urgently need to know how he is going to address this and what he plans to do for PAYE workers this year.

Second, in last year’s budget, the Minister pursued reckless and unsustainable spending policies. He gave an ineffective and expensive VAT cut to big burger chains, which we in the Labour Party strongly opposed. He left a shortfall of €600 million in the education budget. Unfortunately, it seems that this year we are seeing more of the same. The Defence Forces are now cutting student officer rations in a miserly and desperate effort to save €12 million. His flagship policy this year seems to be chasing global oil prices as Trump’s war rages in Iran and the Middle East. Workers are watching as the Government spends more than a billion on untargeted fossil fuel subsidies, with hundreds of millions more to come.

Fine Gael is now spit-balling the idea of special investment accounts for those who already have money in the bank but, meanwhile, families cannot afford childcare costs or to put food on the table. Almost 70% of young people are looking beyond our shores for a better life, as the youth council reports today.

Will the Minister learn from last year’s mistakes? Will he look to spend money where it can make a difference to communities, to help the hundreds of thousands now in arrears on their energy bills and the commuters facing enormous and outrageous public transport fare increases? The Minister needs to invest in alternatives. He needs to make it easier to switch to solar power, heat pumps, electric vehicles, bicycles and affordable public transport. We need a massive street-by-street retrofitting programme, as the Labour Party has called for, and the roll-out of a new urban and rural re-electrification programme, based on renewables, across the country. That is the best way to bring down household bills in a sustainable manner and tackle climate change. Instead, all the Minister offers are temporary, half measures, namely, untargeted fossil fuel subsidies.

Here are three choices the Labour Party is asking the Minister to make in this budget. First, will he meaningfully engage with public sector workers and deliver for PAYE workers? Second, will he properly fund public services like education, rather than narrowing the tax base further? Third, will he invest seriously in the climate transition, instead of continuing with unsustainable and untargeted fossil fuel subsidies?

I am really surprised to see the Deputy label something like the fuel allowance as a fossil fuel subsidy. What would low-income workers and-----

The Minister knows that is not what I am talking about.

----- the most vulnerable in our society say about that? It was an important measure taken by this Government.

Jesus.

I heard the Deputy on "Morning Ireland" in the past couple of weeks. She was asked a direct question. She was very much a leader on a hedge. She was not sure what way to go when it came to questions on the carbon tax and other matters. The Deputy should make up her own mind about what her policy direction is.

We are very clear what it is.

We are very clear, as a Government, when it comes to supporting people and families around the cost of living. We will have targeted measures using our social protection system, as I have said. Second, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, will bring forward changes to grants to incentivise and help families build sustainability in their own homes and ensure that there are more accessible grants for people who currently cannot afford them. There might be different views on how we should do that but that is something he wants to make positive progress on in the budgetary context as well. Everyone across this House would support that.

Third, when it comes to last year's budget, we obviously made decisions with respect to housing and taxation around housing to support greater supply in the economy, which has to be welcomed. Anything we can do to support increased housing supply has to be supported. We are correct to make that decision. Similarly, when it came to protecting jobs in the adjustment, particularly in regions and rural Ireland, VAT changes were made.

The Deputy's question related to public sector pay talks. We have obviously had a decision by trade unions to move to industrial action rather than engaging in substantive talks.

That is not the case.

That is not true.