The Labour Party has called on the Government to postpone the carbon levy on home heating fuels until measures are in place to help low income families meet higher fuel costs.
In a statement today, social protection spokeswoman Roisin Shortall said such households were set to suffer a double fuel blow. The fuel allowance “season” - running from September to April each year - would end this week for more than 300,000 families will end on Saturday, she said, with the new carbon levy on home heating gas, oil, coal and peat kicking in from May 1st.
"For people who rely on oil for their home-heating the impact is particularly severe. The retail price of home heating oil is due to rise by up to 8.7 per cent because of the carbon levy. The price of home heating oil has already risen by 37.6 per cent in the last year, according to the CSO," Ms Shortall said.
"It also comes on top of the huge expense of heating homes during one of the coldest winters for decades."
While noting the Minister for Finance had promised a vouched fuel allowance scheme in his budget speech to offset the fuel increases, Ms Shortall said: "It has never been precisely clear which fuels these vouchers will apply to, when the scheme would start, and which households would qualify.
She said that, when questioned in the Dáil last week, new Minister for Social Protection Eamon Ó Cuív "confessed he simply didn’t know when a new scheme might start".
The Labour TD said it was "shameful" the Government plans to introduce the new carbon levy without having a plan to help poorer households pay for it. "It is a measure of the Government’s utter incompetence and obsession with the banks that compensating measures will not be in place before the levy starts."
When pressed in the Dáil on when an assistance scheme for paying fuel costs would be introduced Mr Ó Cuív responded: “The deputy is going to learn one thing about me, that is when I am ready to make a decision I will make it. Nobody will force me into making a decision before I am ready. As I said I have not got the recommendations and therefore I cannot answer the question at this time.”
Elsewhere, the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) has called for the carbon tax on farm diesel, due to come into effect on May 1st, to be scrapped.
In a statement, IFA president John Bryan said: "The Green agenda cannot be allowed to hijack the productivity of the agricultural sector just to shore up support among their dwindling membership."
He said the latest figures from the Department of Agriculture show the carbon tax will reduce farm incomes by 2 per cent. "It will escalate costs for the tillage sector and agricultural contractors, who are struggling to pay the bills as things stand, never mind further increases."
"The imposition of this uncompetitive tax on production will hamper the recovery of the agriculture sector and its return to growth.
"The carbon tax on farm diesel in particular is simply an extra cost on production for farmers as no alternative fuels are available, and farmers cannot pass on the extra cost to the market," Mr Bryan said, adding the IFA had spoken to Ministers and rural TDs in recent weeks about the impact of the carbon tax.
