Matt Carthy

all of the financial supports only to those people who meet certain income thresholds, you miss the big point that there are lots of people who on the face of it are earning a good wage.

But at the end of every single month, they wonder how they're going to pay their electricity bill or how they're going to put fuel in the tank of their car.

And yes, of course, you have to have directed targeted support.

But I have an issue with this constant kickback around universal measures.

One of the biggest moves that has ever been made by this state, and it's often cited, was Donegal O'Malley's

decision to introduce free second level education.

That was a universal measure that nobody would suggest undoing.

And likewise, when people pay the taxes, whether it be income taxes or other taxes, they expect to get services in return.

And this is up to the state to actually provide those services and supports when people are desperately in need.

But that doesn't help the person who's in their car now who has to drive to walk on terrible roads, by the way.

What we have with the current carbon tax model, and Emma acknowledges this in one way, is actually a distribution of wealth from poor people who can't afford to retrofit their home or change their car or change their mode of transport towards people who, if you're living around here, around Donnybrook and you're across the road from public transport, you can get huge sums of money to retrofit your home.

I want to introduce, I want to have a system where you don't penalise those people who have no choice.

And that's currently what we're doing.

We're just after announcing a record surplus this year.

I cannot tolerate a situation where we have record surpluses and yet where you have people with two incomes coming into the house that at the end of every month that they are in a position that previous generations... You talk about roads a second ago.

We want to invest in infrastructure.

The problem is that the part of the problem is that the expenditure and the surpluses that government have had haven't gone to support.

Will you allow me to finish on?

They haven't gone to support people who desperately need support, but they also haven't gone into the types of infrastructure and investment in services that would actually cushion us for any economic shocks into the future.

This government is notoriously bad at wasting, wasting huge sums of public money.