The Deputy is getting like-----

If the people backed Sinn Féin, the Deputy would not have been the Opposition's spokesperson on finance for 16 years. The people do not back Sinn Féin, so stop speaking-----

The Deputy is over there shouting and roaring for 16 years. He must be exhausted but while he is over there shouting and roaring, we are working with constructive people in opposition and constructive people in government to try to pull this country together. While Sinn Féin wants to cause chaos, we have taken measures to help farmers. I think the Deputy would accept that the IFA represents farmers. It has been in the room and has welcomed this scheme. He can pooh-pooh it. He is not a farmer and neither am I.

The Deputy is in a so-called bubble longer than me, but his anger might be making him forget that fact. He is in the bubble a long time. I am not sure who he thinks elects me to Dáil Éireann, but he should come to Wicklow and meet the people who have never not elected me. He should not give me guff about who represents the ordinary people. Everybody in here has a mandate and people who vote for everybody are ordinary people. The Deputy does not have a monopoly on that. He likes to suggest that the Government has no…

We cannot do both.

I always listen.

There is one army.

The Deputy cannot come in here and spend the surplus and then pursue a policy agenda that would have resulted in us never having it. We would not have had a surplus if we had followed his economic plan. It has been hard-won and earned by the Irish people and is there to be deployed in an appropriate manner and to make sure that the Deputy's children and mine never experience the austerity we experienced. It is there as an intergenerational support. The Deputy knows that. We put it into funds. They are not rainy day…

Fair enough. Once we do one thing, the Deputy wants us to do the next. He originally asked us to suspend it.

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. It is my time so I am going to speak.

I have been very clear that we do not rule out the need to make further energy interventions. An energy crisis in the months of April and May will be very different from an energy crisis in the months of October, November and December. We have to prepare for that period too. The fuel allowance is being provided to 470,000 households. I do not know the circumstances of the pensioner's home the Deputy was in last night, but I know many pensioners, including those most at risk of fuel poverty, people with a disability…

The Deputy suggests the Government does not take action to endeavour to assist people. That is his mantra. That is air enough. That is what he says but it is not true. There are other facts. We are presiding over a country where the average weekly wage is over €1,000. They are not my figures; they are from the CSO. Every working day in this country 200 new jobs are being created. The long-term unemployment rate is at around 1%, an historic low. We announced a package of €750 million to directly help people, includi…

The Deputy is seriously out of touch in terms of the scale of the economic challenge facing the world right now. The Deputy’s position on this is to ask for more and more money to be spent every day. Maybe that is what one does when one is in opposition. In fairness, not all Opposition parties do that, but maybe that is what the Deputy’s party does when it is in opposition. The Deputy is ignoring the fact that he would not be able to speak to any of my European counterparts who has done more. If he brings in Rachel…

If you accept that the fuel allowance is a payment, albeit one you want to blow a hole in through the carbon tax-----

Ignoring that, if you accept that the fuel allowance is an important way of helping the people most at risk of fuel poverty, which I think is your position in the North-----

The only step the Sinn Féin Minister of Finance in the North has taken is a very small step towards a smaller version of the fuel allowance. You are in government in the North.

You have the First Minister, the Minister of Finance and the Minister for the Economy-----

-----but you are not doing anything to help in the North at all. People need to look at how you say one thing down here and you do another thing up there.

It is complete hypocrisy.

There is lots you could do.