TÁNAISTE SIMON HARRIS has ruled out a “mini budget” to tackle the cost-of-living crisis and said it “makes sense” to “prioritise” certain sectors for an intervention.

During this afternoon’s Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil, Labour’s Ged Nash said that working families are “left wondering what will it take for you to act to help them?”

“Which piece of road or what port should they blockade before you take notice,” he added.

Nash said that Harris has been “flying budget kites” recently, “including income tax cuts, energy credits and increased retrofit grants, you name it”.

“Why do PAYE workers have to wait over six months for relief when protesters only had to wait for a week?”

Nash added: “Those sectors did need some support, but why are the needs of the real drivers of the economy being blanked by you?”

Nash also pointed to surpluses and added that the public “know we cannot spend it all at once, and they certainly know that services need to be paid for”.

“And they saw that you very quickly found €750m over the last month for sectoral interests, but they need help now,” said Nash.

He said there are ways for Harris to “responsibly do a mini budget now to provide real relief for PAYE workers”, such as a windfall tax on energy companies and targeting the money raised at average income households.

Harris confirmed that he will not be bringing forward a mini budget and earlier told Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty that “we can’t come in here every Thursday and effectively propose that we do another budget”.

He also told Doherty that he wanted to “make sure we have options at budget time”.

“We already took a very significant intervention, we stand ready to take further interventions, but we will not have the options we require if we try and have a budget every Thursday.”

Harris meanwhile replied to Nash that the €750m package is the “largest or second largest in the European Union”.

Harris added: “There are some sectors where it simply makes sense, when there’s a fuel crisis, to prioritise an intervention.

“We’re not all the same in terms of our fuel consumption. It did make sense for all of us to make sure we keep our supply chains and certain crucial sectors of the Irish economy going.”

However, Harris also remarked that this package will “benefit everybody”.

He said the Chief Economist at the Department of Finance estimated that inflation will be around 0.6% lower in the months of May, June and July than it otherwise would have been.

“By keeping inflation down through the package, we are having a positive impact on what that supermarket bill would have been otherwise.”

Harris also said that recent fuel protests and blockades are “not who we are as a people”.

“We all know we’re better than that as a people,” said Harris.

“There’s people angry, there’s people frustrated, I get that, but we do have to have really good structures for engagement in place with the democratically constituted national bodies.”

Meanwhile, Harris denied he was “kite flying” and added: “When I get asked a question, I try to answer it.

“I was asked a question – ‘will there be a personal income tax package in the budget? – yes, there will.”

Earlier, Doherty had called on Harris to reintroduce energy credits.

“Your own economic spring forecast shows that the money is there,” said Doherty.

“The reality is that a fraction of the surpluses would make a real difference for ordinary people’s lives.

“This isn’t about money, this is about political choices.

“You are choosing not to act, you’re choosing to leave families exposed, you’re choosing to let bills rise, you’re choosing to tell people to wait while the crisis deepens.

“But people cannot wait, because the crisis is here right now, the pressure on families is right now.”

Harris remarked that the Government has to be “agile” and that he is pleased there is a surplus and that it “didn’t come about by accident or fall from the sky”.

“It means that we have a fiscal buffer built up, but the surplus isn’t just sitting there idle.

“It’s going into infrastructure, it’s going into climate adaptation, it’s going into a Future Ireland Fund to meet, for example, pension requirements.”