No 'mini-budget' needed for ongoing energy crisis

Cllr Paddy O'Rourke was speaking after Taoiseach Micheál Martin rejected calls for an emergency or mini-budget as the Opposition called for a further package.

A Leitrim councillor has poured cold water on the suggestion that there should be a mini-budget to deal with the ongoing energy crisis.

Cllr Paddy O'Rourke said that he opposed the proposal stating: "If there was another crisis in education or in health or something and another mini-budget to solve that then you'd have the opposition saying the government must have got it very wrong at the outset of their estimates because they need all these mini-budgets that the opposition had initially called for."

He was speaking after Taoiseach Micheál Martin rejected calls for an emergency or mini-budget as the Opposition called for a further package.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonal had renewed her party’s call for an emergency budget, a “permanent USC cut that puts €500 back in workers’ pockets”, energy credits for households, a €500 payment for people with disabilities and “a suite of measures to protect the most vulnerable”.

She said what was needed from Government “was quick, decisive action to provide people with real relief, to give working households certainty for the time ahead”.

Mr Martin said that the Government had allocated €750 million “and there’s a budget in October”. He said “we don’t have money in the bottom of the drawer like you’re suggesting”.

Much of the surplus is in the Future Ireland Funds, he said. The money has been put aside and a lot of it is being invested “unless you’re advocating it be taken out of the funds”.