I have to rise again to ask about assistance for the construction and civil engineering sector and the cost of green diesel. I raised this two weeks ago with the Minister for Transport, Deputy Darragh O'Brien. He said the scheme was being worked on but that he was not responsible for it, and that the Minister for agriculture, Deputy Heydon, was not responsible for it either. In all the signals the Tánaiste has been giving lately about the budget, he seems to have been talking about everyone and every sector except the construction sector. Surely it will not be left out again.

All the construction and civil engineering companies, and even small sole traders, are struggling owing to the savage increase in the cost of green diesel. These contractors and operators are involved in building houses and roads, sewerage and water schemes, industrial units and factories, and in energy projects involving wind, solar, the provision of electricity and connectivity. They work in the maintenance of our roads, water systems and all the services.

With all the housebuilding and everything else that is to be done, we do not have enough construction and civil engineering contractors. We must mind what we have. The Tánaiste said he did not want housing provision slowed down. That was back in May.

Thank you, Deputy

I am disappointed that there is no word about the construction sector or civil engineering and I ask the Tánaiste to ensure it is included now.

I thank the Deputy for raising this. I am conscious that he knows a lot about this industry and machines. It is an area the Government is committed to endeavouring to assist people with because I am conscious that the energy costs are real, for everyone. They have an inflationary effect on the economy and therefore affect everyone more broadly.

However, I am also conscious that, beyond that, particular sectors of the economy are particularly badly effected and they are crucial sectors, not just for the jobs they create, although that is important, but also from a supply chain point of view. As the Deputy correctly said, they do the construction of our homes and critical buildings and the production of our food. That is why we are working across the Government in the here and now to see what we can do further to assist in the budget next Tuesday. The Minister, Deputy Heydon, is working intensively on issues related to agriculture. I met farmers at the ploughing championships who are looking to make improvements to their buildings with solar panels and the like. They need a bit of help. There is a view that we need to ensure the farm support scheme that was in place is extended because the crisis certainly has not abated. I met hauliers recently as well as the Irish Farmers' Association, IFA and the Irish Creamery Milk Supplier Association, ICMSA. The diesel rebate scheme is in place to the end of the year and, as the Deputy said, we are giving consideration to the issues of home heating oil and gas. There are limits to what any government can do. There are fiscal limits and limits in terms of having to work within EU directives.

The Deputy specifically asked about construction workers. The Minister, Deputy Chambers, and I had a good meeting with the Construction Industry Federation recently. The Taoiseach and I have discussed this too and the Government will bottom out how best to bring forward support to the construction sector. The Deputy referenced previous comments of the Taoiseach on the matter. We will do that shortly.

More broadly, while cost pressures on people are real and many of them are materialised through energy costs - there is no doubt about that - there are a number of ways the Government can try to help. One is by doing direct things we can do to help with energy. We are looking at all of them. However, there are other levers we can also pull because for farmers, hauliers, construction workers or workers in any part of the economy, if we can reduce tax on their take-home pay and improve what their payslips look like at the end of the week or month, that is a way of helping. If people are dependent on childcare services and we can drive down the cost of childcare, that is a way of helping. If people are at particular risk of fuel poverty - almost 500,000 homes receive support - and we can do more to help them, that is a way of helping. For older people who live alone trying to heat the house, there are other ways through the social welfare system that are also ways of helping.

I am not saying the Deputy is saying this, but I just make the point. We cannot look at how to help with the cost of energy only through energy policy. We have to look at all the levers available to the Government to try to reduce costs in general for people, because they do not look at it through Departments or silos; they look at their bottom line and we will endeavour to do as much as we can to help next week.

I welcome the packages the Government has given, but it must remember a lot of the money being given back is only being given back to the people the Government took it from in the first place. When the base goes up, extra tax is taken in carbon tax and so on. The Government must remember that and at least give back what it has taken. It has taken from the construction sector as well. The Tánaiste must remember that a lot of the construction industry had entered into commitments, tenders and contracts from the start of the year, before things got bad, in other words before the war started. People have to honour those commitments and they are losing their shirts on them. The types of vehicles I mentioned for construction are guzzling green diesel and the price has gone up. The construction and all those things will not carry on. Last year, the average was 94 cent and it is €1.78 today and the Government only gave 3 cent in whatever package it gave last May. That is not fair. I ask him to look at it seriously and it must be given retrospectively, back to January when it was given to the rest of the sectors, to be fair about it.

In the interest of fairness - and I appreciate the Deputy's elevation of my powers of influence - the reason energy prices have risen rapidly in this country and around the world is that the Strait of Hormuz is closed. That is not my fault. What I can do is look at the policy levers the Government can pursue and not just comment on what is going on in other parts of the world. Any objective analysis of the situation will show the Government has put in place - the Deputy can argue about the composition of the package, but not the quantum - one of the largest packages of support, if not the largest, in the European Union.

The package we put in place in Ireland, adjusted for head of population, is around eight times larger than the one of our nearest EU neighbours in France. Our friends in the UK have had to put in place a much smaller package and does the Deputy know what they had to do? They had to borrow for it and got charged nearly 5% on the market.

I am not interested in them at all. I am interested in Ireland-----

No, but I am-----

-----and Kerry.

Deputy Healy-Rae.

I am interested because people in Kerry need to know that, despite the way the Deputy presents things, the Government is doing a lot to help and will continue to help. It is not fair to say the packages only had an impact of this, that and the other. The package we put in place has suppressed inflation by 0.6% across the economy. That means, when people do their shopping in Kerry today, the cost of their grocery basket is 0.6% lower than it would have been if it were not for Government action. I want people to know that further help is on the way in the budget next week. I heard what the Deputy said about particular sectors of the economy and we are examining all of them.