Sinn Féin and Tánaiste clash over fuel cost measures

By Bairbre Holmes, Press Association

The Tánaiste has defended the Government’s measures tackling the rising cost of fuel, saying they are the “largest interventions of any EU member state based on our population”.

During Leaders’ Questions on Thursday, Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty said: “We should be reducing the excise duty on home heating oil tonight, and giving the maximum reduction on diesel that is possible, and the same on petrol.”

He added the Dáil will not sit for the next 20 days and “families are going to be left to fend for themselves”.

Simon Harris responded and said: “We brought in, this week, the largest interventions of any EU member state based on our population, to help people in the here and now.

“To help people at the petrol pump and to help people with the price of diesel.

“To help our hauliers, to help our coach operators and to help those most at risk of fuel poverty.”

He also offered clarity to people who had opted into lump sum payments for the fuel allowance.

He said they would be able to receive the four-week extension in a lump sum, and it would also be paid from next week.

He accused Doherty of having a “populist tendency to just oppose everything for the sake of opposing” and said the rest of the Opposition decided to “take off” their “party jerseys” and voted with the Government for a package of measures that “will help people in some way”.

Doherty said Harris’s response was “more spin” and “more deflection” from the Government.

He said they had left 750,000 families reliant on home heating oil “in the lurch” and said Sinn Féin had put forward an amendment that would have seen “excise duty completely removed from home heating oil, a cost that has nearly doubled in four weeks”, which was voted down.

Harris claimed Doherty had made a number of “mistakes” in his analysis of the situation and said: “You’ve called on us to remove excise on home heating oil, there isn’t excise on home heating oil”.