{"id":190467,"date":"2025-11-20T09:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T09:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/190467\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T09:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T09:11:07","slug":"bualadh-bos-for-liz-truss-as-coalition-use-the-lettuce-to-stave-off-sinn-fein-attack-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/190467\/","title":{"rendered":"Bualadh bos for Liz Truss as Coalition use \u2018the lettuce\u2019 to stave off Sinn F\u00e9in attack \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s seldom is wonderful and it isn\u2019t very often that the Fianna F\u00e1il leader has a chance to taunt his Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> counterpart about what he sees as her party\u2019s desire to help struggling millionaires pay their punitive energy bills. <\/p>\n

And when Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> isn\u2019t around to point this out, his Coalition partner, Fine Gael leader Simon Harris<\/a>, is always similarly delighted to remind Mary Lou McDonald of this.<\/p>\n

It makes a novel change from having to absorb the fat cat, golden circle, cosy cartel jibes slung regularly from across the floor during Leaders\u2019 Questions. <\/p>\n

The Taoiseach and the T\u00e1naiste have one woman to thank for throwing them this welcome lifeline.<\/p>\n

Bualadh bos for Liz Truss<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Or, a round of applause for the former UK prime minister whose brief tenure in number 10 was outlasted by a lettuce. <\/p>\n

Liz of the 49 Days may never know it, but her awful mini-budget which crashed the British economy and sent the markets into turmoil lives long in the memory of Government leaders across the Irish Sea. <\/p>\n

Despite having departed the Westminster political scene in 2024, the hapless ex-Tory leader has become a regular fixture during stormy D\u00e1il sessions when the Sinn F\u00e9in leader lambastes the Government over its failure to reintroduce energy credits for householders during the winter months. <\/p>\n

Having introduced them in response to rising energy costs brought about by the war in Ukraine, the Coalition is now committed to applying targeted measures for people most in need of support. The last payments were in January of this year.<\/p>\n

This is not the way to go, argues Mary Lou McDonald, who dialled up her demands for a return to the universal reduction of bills once the evenings begin drawing in. <\/p>\n

Now Met \u00c9ireann<\/a> has issued a cold weather warning, temperatures over the coming days are set to plunge to minus-3 and the situation is critical, she told the Taoiseach on Wednesday, quoting a person who contacted her office that morning to say they are anticipating a gas bill in excess of \u20ac500 after a huge charge for autumn usage, when the heat had barely been on. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is nearly impossible for us. It looks like we will freeze again this year. It is just survival now,\u201d they wrote. <\/p>\n

Everything is going up across the board, from groceries to rent to student fees and now a cold snap is setting in, said Mary Lou.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am going to ask you again, Taoiseach, and I\u2019m going to ask you plainly: will you please restore the energy credits or are you going to allow people struggle through the winter?\u201d<\/p>\n

Did somebody say energy credits?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Truss time. <\/p>\n

Miche\u00e1l opened by rejecting the charge that the Government is not responding to the plight of people struggling with the cost of living. It could do this because the Irish economy had been resilient enough to come through the Brexit years, Covid, the invasion of Ukraine and subsequent energy crisis. <\/p>\n

And speaking of which …<\/p>\n

\u201cI recall Deputy McDonald advancing the Liz Truss solution on that occasion, where you wanted to bail out all the energy companies. Liz Truss tried that and look what happened \u2013 that\u2019s what happened. You had the Liz Truss approach to the energy crisis and you quickly abandoned it as soon as things went pear-shaped in the UK as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three mentions there of the useless PM. (She brought in price caps for domestic charges with equivalent breaks for the energy firms and mayhem ensued.)<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Energy companies will factor in subsidies to \u2018gouge\u2019 customers, Taoiseach saysOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Once he introduced the Sinn F\u00e9in\/Liz Truss price caps link, the Taoiseach delivered his list of reductions which have been targeted at people most in need.<\/p>\n

There was the extra few bob for the pensioners and free schoolbooks and fuel allowances for a quarter of all households and grants for retrofitting the house and, while he accepted that times are tough for some households, even the rate of inflation is coming down from the high of 2023. <\/p>\n

They spluttered in disbelief on the Sinn F\u00e9in benches. <\/p>\n

\u201cPlease,\u201d insisted Miche\u00e1l. \u201cSorry, in terms of where it was, it\u2019s coming down. Come on. Cop on … we need to be upfront with people here.\u201d<\/p>\n

His Government \u201chas done more than any other party for a long long time\u201d in directing payments to where they are most needed. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019ve targeted the resources,\u201d he snapped at Mary Lou as her colleagues laughed at him. \u201cYou want to look after the millionaires and so on with energy credits? That\u2019s your business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cathy Bennett, Sinn F\u00e9in TD for Cavan-Monaghan, was gobsmacked. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo now we\u2019re millionaires?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBring back the Galway Tent!\u201d one of her colleagues roared at Miche\u00e1l, which would be the equivalent of the Taoiseach roaring about Liz Truss at them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you\u2019ve had a few millionaires in your day across the wa- eh, over there. Some of them quite dubious, by the way, but we\u2019ll say no more about that,\u201d chortled the Taoiseach, continuing on with his list of achievements.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the bragging in the world from you will not change the fact that a quarter of a million people will turn to the St Vincent de Paul this year,\u201d retorted the Sinn F\u00e9in leader. <\/p>\n

But the repeated comparison of an earlier Sinn F\u00e9in policy with anything engineered by former Tory PM Truss rankled. It always does. <\/p>\n

The Taoiseach and the T\u00e1naiste have been needling them about this for two years now. <\/p>\n

In 2023, Simon Harris, taking Leaders\u2019 Questions on behalf of then-taoiseach Leo Varadkar, told Mary Lou\u2019s stand-in that he was surprised she mentioned energy costs because \u201cSinn F\u00e9in had gone terribly quiet about it\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Sinn F\u00e9in alternative Budget 2026 includes \u20ac450 energy credit and cuts to USC and college feesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

He told Sorca Clarke: \u201cUsually, the opposition can stand up and say whatever it wants and we never get to see how it plays out in the real world. Unfortunately for the opposition, Liz Truss became the British prime minister, albeit for a very brief period …\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lettuce,\u201d chirruped his fellow FG minister, Patrick O\u2019Donovan, the brat.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring that time, I don\u2019t know whether she stole Mary Lou\u2019s homework or Mary Lou stole hers but we ended up in a scenario in which they went ahead and did what Sinn F\u00e9in advised and brought in price caps,\u201d said then-minister Harris.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey bust the country,\u201d chortled O\u2019Donovan.<\/p>\n

Two years on and the Government is still playing the Truss card when Sinn F\u00e9in lectures it on energy prices. <\/p>\n

Miche\u00e1l\u2019s colleagues found the indignant reactions to his taunts about helping out millionaires highly entertaining.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad your benches find that funny and that your would-be successor is grinning like a Cheshire Cat,\u201d noted Mary Lou, as a startled Jim O\u2019Callaghan immediately furrowed his brow. <\/p>\n

Because she didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to tell you I don\u2019t find it funny. I don\u2019t need you to mansplain the economy to me,\u201d she said crisply. <\/p>\n

Will he reintroduce energy credits or not? <\/p>\n

And what, responded Miche\u00e1l, give them \u201cto everybody, irrespective of income \u2013 millionaires and people on twenty grand\u201d, as Sinn F\u00e9in would have it?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a no from him.<\/p>\n

Along with a bualadh bos for Truss. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What\u2019s seldom is wonderful and it isn\u2019t very often that the Fianna F\u00e1il leader has a chance to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,4767,13,14,6,11,12,106409,15,16,16594,5765,55915,5,4766,44,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-190467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-dail-eireann","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-liz-truss","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-mary-lou-mcdonald","20":"tag-micheal-martin","21":"tag-miriam-lord","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-oireachtas","24":"tag-simon-harris","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories","27":"tag-world","28":"tag-world-news","29":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115581254542867034","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}