Minister ‘hopeful’ measures to tackle inflation will be announced on Friday

The Irish Government is due to announce a package of measures to reduce inflation, a Government minister has said.

Enterprise minister Peter Burke was speaking on RTE’s Today with David McCullagh on Friday morning.

He said there would be a response from the Government to rising prices since the outset of the war in Iran.

Mr Burke said: “Hopefully today we will have news on that.

“I do believe we will have news on that, in terms of an intervention that will reduce inflation, that will try and reduce the price of groceries on the shelves for our consumers.”

Asked if this would be an announcement from Brussels or the Irish Government, Mr Burke said: “I’m talking about a response from the Irish Government trying to underwrite and support the production of food, trying to ensure the logistics of getting food on our shelves is supported, and ultimately keeping the price as low as possible.”

He said the Tanaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris is also working with EU colleagues for “flexability” on excise duty rules.

He said European directives limit how much excise duty on diesel, petrol and marked gas oil (known as “green diesel”) can be reduced – and Ireland would need permission to go below those thresholds.

He also said there may be “state aid implications” for other measures the Government is looking at to help the haulage and agriculture industries.

He said the Tanaiste is “working, navigating through those barriers, trying to ensure that we do get a package”.

Protests about the rising cost of fuel, which started on Tuesday, have brought parts of Ireland to a standstill – with demonstrators blocking ports, motorways and Dublin city centre.

Asked if the measures are a response to the protests, Mr Burke said the Government had been working on them for “a couple of weeks”.

He said the Government is engaging with “representative groups” and going through “normal channels”, adding: “If we go away from the constituted channels, then you go to anarchy.”

The minister said moving away from established practices has “consequences”.

He said countries like “Israel, America and Russia taking actions unilaterally themselves” has implications for Ireland, and added “equally as a society we have established protocols where people engage through representative groups”.

Mr Burke also criticised some of the demands of the protesters, saying if a price cap on fuel was introduced it would be a “wrecking ball to our public finances”.

He said a cap of 170 cent on diesel and 90 cent on “green diesel” would cost “billions of euro”.

“Are people aware of the cost of that? That is billions of euros, no state could sustain that into the future,” he added.