WATCH: Budget speech by Deputy Carol Nolan

Speaking in the Dail on Tuesday, on the Government's budget, Deputy Carol Nolan welcomed the widened eligibility for fuel allowance.

"Fuel poverty is real and should shame us as a so-called First World developed nation," she said, asking why the Government had not changed its approach to peat or reclaiming bogs as indigenous sources of fuel and energy for power plants.

She also queried how the policy direction of Ireland's energy development remains unchanged and the Government remains committed to "pursuing a precarious and unstable source of power in the form of renewables"

Deputy Nolan said, as a result, the Government had prolonged the energy crisis for households and businesses and made it even more certain that more electricity credits will have to be delivered in the future.

Although welcoming the increase in social welfare payments, she said they fall far short of what she had her colleagues in the Rural Independent Group had proposed. The increases announced today will not keep pace with inflationary pressures and will, at most, simply allow families to tread water as costs rise around them.

She also queried how the GP system would cope with plans to expand the GP visit card scheme at a time when there was a chronic shortage of GPs.