Michael Healy-Rae: Urgent call for targeted supports in Budget
Michael Healy-Rae addresses the Dail about the urgent need for targeted supports in the upcoming budget to help working families, struggling small businesses and to tackle soaring energy and fuel costs. He highlights business closures in County Kerry, questions high energy bills and calls for measures such as domestic LNG capacity to reduce costs.
Immediate concern: working families and costs
Michael Healy-Rae argues that many people who are working are now at a greater disadvantage because of rising costs: childcare, fuel, mortgage and rent payments, and commuting. He urges the Government to target supports in the next budget to the households and workers who are truly struggling.
Local impact: small businesses closing
Healy-Rae describes a worrying trend of long-established shops, pubs and personal services in County Kerry closing their doors, costing local employment and community value. He stresses that these closures demand urgent pre-budget attention to arrest further decline.
Energy debate and domestic supply
Raising the example of ESB profits and the Shannon LNG debate, Healy-Rae questions why electricity and fuel are so expensive and argues for forward-thinking energy policies to reduce costs. He welcomes recent parliamentary measures and says supporting domestic energy infrastructure could help lower bills.
Budget focus and next steps
He calls for further debates and targeted pre-budget measures, emphasizing support for people on low incomes and those in work. Healy-Rae insists policymakers must examine the tax take on fuel and ensure relief reaches those most affected by the rising cost of living.
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Thank you very much, Ceann Comhairle, Minister. This motion is very timely in that with the massive increase in just people running their homes, running their businesses, people that are working now were never at more of a disadvantage because of the high cost of going to work, the cost of childcare, the cost of fuel and what we need is more targeted approaches by government. We need, and it's never more important or more timely than now in the upcoming budget, to make sure that the supports that will be made available for energy and for the general cost of living will be very, very targeted to help the people who are really struggling and again it seems to me from dealing with people every day that it seems to be more the people that are working, everybody can be struggling, but the people who are going to work every day who have loans on cars, the high cost of mortgage or payments or rent payments, everything is piling up on top of them. It's the same in business, just even in County Kerry alone, the amount of businesses that are closing on a weekly basis is frightening. These businesses seem to be people who have been in business for many, many years, who are very much invalued in our communities, who are indeed creating local employment and at the same time now they're closing their doors. It can be small shops, public houses, gift stores, people who were able to manage before, people involved in different types of personal services like hairdressers and what it's going to do, unless we can do something to arrest it and again just talk about one thing in particularly, the high cost of energy. Why is it costing us so much to be able to provide electricity to people's homes? When we look at the profits that are being made by the likes of ESB, we have to look at what we're doing. That is why I welcome very much for example with regard to Shannon LNG, we should be doing more about providing our own energy and doing more in a forward thinking way to try and ensure that these type of measures would help us in reducing the cost of energy, because when energy costs are going higher and you're all very well aware of the statistics as to exactly how much fuel and energy has gone up in cost, we have to be forward thinking about how we're going to deal with that in the coming years and measures such as what were voted here on last night and supporting an LNG facility in this country. Things like that are so very, very important. I really believe that we have to have more debates about this matter in the coming weeks and in a pre-budget type of way. We've all met with the different groups and the different sectors that have come here over the last number of weeks and months making pre-budget submissions, but at the end of the day the one type of people that we always have to be considering is people on low incomes, people who are working, people who are struggling and trying to help them in every way we can by targeted approaches. And yes, we have to look at the bigger picture than like the high cost of fuel, the tax take that we have on fuel. If you look at the figures, they're mind-boggling. And again, why is fuel more expensive here than in any other part of the world?
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