Finance Bill 2026: Second Stage

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Deputy Robert Troy)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill, which is relatively short and covers the tax aspects of the energy support measures announced by the Government in March and April this year. I will first say a few words about the wider economic landscape. As Deputies are aware, the global economy is facing its second major energy price shock in less than five years. As a small, highly open economy and a net energy importer, Ireland is naturally exposed to movements in international energy prices. The disruption to energy supplies that we have seen to date has already fed into higher and more volatile energy prices with direct consequences for households and businesses.

The role of Government in these circumstances is to spread the burden to ensure that the most exposed sectors are partly shielded. We must also mitigate the impact on those least able to absorb the price changes. I stress that this is about burden sharing and not full absorption. No government in the world can absorb all of the price shock. Governments should not chase inflation when at full employment as this can lead to far greater economic problems over the longer term. We think we have struck the appropriate balance between delivering timely support while at the same time ensuring that the public finances remain on a sustainable trajectory. The combined energy support packages, which also included measures outside of the Bill under discussion today, is estimated to cost over €750 million.

The tax measures, which we will discuss today, are alone estimated to cost €442 million in terms of revenue foregone. As the House will be aware, this substantial package, which is one of the largest in Europe, was introduced following the energy price shocks caused by the conflict in the Middle East. The factors that have brought us here are far from our shores and beyond our control, but as a Government we have acted to mitigate the impacts across society with a broad range of measures. Some of the measures, like the diesel rebate scheme and the fuel allowance extension, are targeted, while others are more broad reaching, such as the excise rate reductions. As we have stated previously, no government can entirely eliminate the impacts of such a broad-reaching crisis. It is also important to again emphasise the importance of ensuring that our response needs to be measured and not risk second-round inflationary impacts.

I will briefly outline the elements of the support packages covered in the Finance Bill. These measures were debated in the House on 24 March and 14 April when the financial resolutions to give them temporary effect were approved. I thank the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach for its constructive engagement to date on the outline of the Bill, which means these important measures can move as quickly as possible through the legislative process. The Bill is quite short, consisting of four substantive sections. Section 1 provides for the increase in the maximum repayment rate under the diesel rebate scheme. Section 2 deals with the temporary excise rate reductions for petrol, diesel, green diesel and the deferral of the planned 1 May carbon tax increase for mineral oil fuels. Sections 3 and 4 relate to the deferral of the planned 1 May carbon tax increase for natural gas and solid fuels.

I will now turn to each section in detail. As I mentioned, section 1 relates to the diesel rebate scheme, which was introduced in 2013 to provide support for essential road users at times when the price of auto diesel was relatively high. The diesel rebate scheme, DRS, is permitted under Article 7 of the energy tax directive, subject to the conditions set out in the directive. The scheme provides qualifying road haulage and passenger transport operators with a partial repayment of mineral oil tax paid on auto diesel.

In 2025, close to €39 million was paid out under the scheme, providing targeted support to the road haulage and passenger transport sectors. The DRS also provides support to the wider economy, which is dependent on haulage as a distribution network. Households and other businesses benefit indirectly by virtue of reduced distribution costs. To qualify for the scheme, road haulage and passenger transport operators must have an appropriate road transport licence and be tax compliant. The auto diesel must be used in qualifying vehicles in the course of the transport operator’s business. In addition, the auto diesel must have been purchased with tax paid in the State by means of a Revenue-approved fuel card provider or in bulk for delivery to the transport operator’s business premises.

The diesel rebate scheme rate of repayment is linked to the average retail price of auto diesel based on data from the Central Statistics Office. Since the end of 2021, a 7.5 cent per litre maximum level of rebate has applied to all claims, reflecting the relatively low price of €1.43 per litre at which the maximum rebate was given. The amendment we are speaking to today provides for an increase in the repayment cap from 7.5 cent per litre to 12 cent per litre. This enhanced or extended repayment rate applies to claims covering auto diesel purchased between 1 January and 30 June this year.

The diesel rebate scheme operates on a quarterly repayment basis, with repayment claims available for submission to Revenue quarterly in arrears. On 1 April 2026, Revenue opened the claim period for the enhanced rate under the rebate scheme for quarter 1. Some 1,427 claims, to the value of €10.6 million, were submitted in the period from 1 April to 5 June 2026 in respect of the first quarter of 2026. This compares with the 1,015 claims to the value of €4.9 million which were received for quarter 1 in the same filing period in 2025. I am advised by Revenue that it is currently processing these claims and has, between 1 April and 5 June, refunded 847 of those 1,427 claims to the value of €5.9 million under the enhanced rebate scheme. The estimated cost of increasing the maximum repayment from 7.5 cent to 12 cent from this six-month period is just €10 million.

Moving to section 2, which relates to the temporary reductions in excise applying to auto diesel, petrol and green diesel and the deferral of the May carbon tax increase on certain fuels, in March, we legislated for VAT-inclusive excise reductions of 15 cent per litre for petrol, 20 cent per litre for auto diesel and 3 cent per litre for green diesel. In addition, the NORA levy was reduced by 2 cent per litre for liquid fuels such as auto diesel, petrol, green diesel and kerosene. The initial legislation provided for these temporary reductions to be effective from 25 March to 31 May at an estimated cost of €150 million in terms of revenue forgone. In April, the Government announced a further reduction of 10 cent per litre on auto diesel and petrol as well as a further 2.4 cent reduction for green diesel. Taking the 2 cent NORA levy reduction into account, this brings the total reductions to 32 cent per litre for auto diesel, 27 cent per litre for petrol and 7.4 cent per litre for green diesel. We also legislated to extend all of the excise reductions until 31 July 2026. The Minister for Climate, Energy and Environment has also acted to extend the NORA levy reduction until the end of July. The estimated cost of these further excise rate reductions and the extension of the initial reductions until is €260 million. The NORA levy reduction is estimated to cost €40 million.

Section 2 also provides for the deferral of the planned 1 May carbon tax increase on certain mineral oil fuels, including kerosene heating oil and marked gas oil. Sections 3 and 4 also deal with the deferral of the carbon tax increase for natural gas and solid fuels. The decision to defer the carbon tax increase was made in recognition of the sustained level of inflation that green diesel and kerosene in particular were facing. The deferral of the increase provides additional relief from price pressures to consumers of these fuels as well as consumers of natural gas and solid fuels. This decision reflects the Government’s continued commitment to balancing climate ambition with the need to mitigate the impacts on households and businesses from the energy price shock.

As the Tánaiste stated at the time of the decision in April, this is the first time that we have postponed a carbon tax increase since the multi-annual trajectory of carbon tax increases was introduced in 2020 and this was not a decision that was taken lightly. Since the introduction of carbon tax increases under budget 2020, the Government has ensured that revenues raised are transparently and purposefully recycled. These investments have funded energy efficiency upgrades in homes and communities, supported decarbonisation across agriculture and transport and underpinned just transition measures. The allocations for 2026 were determined as part of budget 2026 and are consistent with the approach taken in previous years. Over €1 billion has been allocated to climate action and social protection measures, representing an increase of €163 million on the 2025 allocation. These funds are specifically targeted at measures that ensure households most exposed to energy and fuel costs are protected from unintended impacts.

The agreed deferral of the carbon tax increase will result in lower carbon tax revenues in 2026 than originally projected, with an estimated revenue impact of €22 million. This represents a small share of the total allocation of approximately €1.1 billion, just under 2%. The allocations set out in budget 2026 were approved by the Oireachtas and remain the voted amounts for the year. This includes carbon tax funding commitments incorporated into the national development plan, which provides medium-term budgetary certainty for the sectors and communities supported by these measures. It is not possible to offset all of the recent increases, which are driven by market forces, using the tax system. However, the measures this Bill legislates for will provide significant mitigation, supporting households and businesses experiencing the most acute impacts of the increases in fuel prices.

As I mentioned earlier, these tax measures form part of the broader package of measures Government announced in March and April this year. In March, we also extended the fuel allowance by an additional four weeks. This targeted intervention provided the 470,000 households in receipt of the fuel allowance with an additional €38 per week, totalling €152 over the four-week period on top of the annual allowance of €1,064.

On 12 April, as part of the second package of supports, the Government announced a comprehensive €100 million fuel income support scheme. The fuel income support scheme has been introduced as a targeted income support to assist farmers, agricultural contractors and fishers facing unprecedented increases in fuel costs. The scheme is available for fuel used over the five-month period from March up to the end of July 2026, which coincides with peak fuel usage on farms. Farmers and agricultural contractors availing of the scheme will benefit from a support rate equivalent to approximately 20 cent per litre of green diesel. The funding will be distributed proportionally, reflecting a point that was strongly emphasised in engagements with the representative farm and farm contractor groups. In terms of the fuel income support scheme for farmers, foresters and contractors, which closed for applications on 2 June, it will take some time for all the relevant information to be collated to give definitive information regarding claimant numbers and likely payment amounts. This targeted and practical support package ensures that those most exposed to these increases will receive meaningful assistance at the most critical time of year. Farmers and agricultural contractors availing of the scheme will benefit from a support rate equivalent to approximately 20 cent per litre of green diesel.

To further support the haulage and coach sector, the Government has also established a new road transporters support scheme, RTSS. This is modelled on the licensed haulage support schemes of 2022 and 2023, which were deployed to assist the sector with the higher fuel prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The road transporters support scheme will provide direct payments to hauliers, both licensed and own account. Payments are graduated, with smaller businesses receiving a proportionately greater level of support.

Additionally, support for operators of Transport for Ireland's Local Link services will be available through the National Transport Authority, and support for school transport services will be facilitated by the Department of Education and Youth. The estimated cost of these additional transport sector supports is €120 million.

As I said, this is a short but important Finance Bill. There has already been extensive debate on these measures when they were first announced and when the subsequent financial resolutions were passed. I am fully aware of the sensitivity and topical nature of the issues at hand. I look forward to further constructive discussion on this now on Second Stage and as it progresses through the legislative process. I commend the Bill to the House.

Deputy Pearse Doherty

Táim buíoch as an deis labhairt ar an mBille seo. The Bill follows on from the financial resolutions that were passed through these Houses and came into effect in March and again in April in relation to the fuel crisis. Section 1, as the Minister of State said, relates to the increase in the diesel rebate scheme. I have raised this issue on many occasions with the Minister of State and the senior Minister, given the fact that many hauliers have issues accessing the scheme. On top of that, as the Tánaiste accepted when I put it to him previously, even the people who can access the scheme face severe cash flow issues and have to wait up to three months before they get the rebate. Despite the acceptance of this fact and the genuine issue that hauliers were facing, we still see no action to address it.

Sinn Féin argued in this House over and over again for a completely different approach. Because of how the EU energy directive is designed, when the diesel rebate scheme is increased, the space for the Government to reduce excise for the wider general public is reduced. However, there is a way in which the wider public, hauliers and transport operators can benefit at the same time. If the Government makes the cut directly at the pump, hauliers get the benefit, and they get it immediately without having to wait for three months. Everybody else also benefits - every commuter and every person who fills up their car with petrol or diesel - and it avoids the cash flow issues that the rebate scheme has ingrained within it.

Section 2 is probably the most substantive part of this legislation. It contains both excise cuts on fuels like petrol and diesel and the postponement of carbon taxes on home heating oil, green diesel and canister gas until October of this year. The excise cuts should have gone further on petrol, diesel and green diesel. We know people are still spending over €100 to fill their tanks. If they live in rural Ireland, have a long commute or drive as part of their work, they are getting crucified by those prices over and over again. We have heard from carers, home help workers and ordinary people who simply cannot afford to put fuel in their car. At the same time, the Government prioritised other areas. It cut private jet fuel by 17% while struggling to reduce home heating oil by a single cent. You could not make this up.

The second component of this section is that the carbon tax is being postponed until the autumn. That was one of the most frustrating elements of the Government's response to the crisis. The Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, specifically ruled out taking this basic step over and over again. At a time of huge pressure and crisis, he stood and proudly said that he and his Government were going to put taxes on people in the middle of the crisis. His immediate reaction to the fuel crisis was to dig his heels in and refuse to consider postponing a carbon tax increase. Think of that from the perspective of someone who was sitting at home with an empty tank in a cold house. They had just seen the price of home heating oil almost double, and the Taoiseach was not only refusing - indeed, he still refuses - to cut a single cent of excise duty from home heating oil, but his reaction was also to heap more tax and more pressure on that same family. It is no wonder that anger boiled over and, by God, anger did boil over.

Section 3 does the same for the carbon tax on natural gas. There is no access to natural gas in Donegal. As with the rail network and the motorway network, my constituency is cut off from the gas network. However, for many people across the State, heating their homes and water with gas has become completely unaffordable. One in four households is unable to pay the gas bill. That is a shocking indictment of Government failure, and it does not even count all of the people on pay-as-you-go meters and those working every hour that God sends and just managing to keep their heads above water.

Section 4 deals with the postponement of carbon tax on solid fuels, such as coal, briquettes and turf. These are fuels that heat the coldest homes in the country. It is what people turn to when they cannot afford a refill of oil. The Government is now proposing to lump more tax on home heating oil, coal and natural gas in October. When the days are getting shorter and far colder, the response of this Government will be to push up taxes on home heating oil, coal and natural gas. You could not make it up.

This legislation also recommits to increasing the carbon tax every single year until 2030. The Government nowhere in legislation says that it will improve the healthcare outcomes for people until 2030, or make an investment every year. It does not say that with regard to tax changes that would allow people to keep more money in their pockets but, by God, when it comes to carbon tax, the Government is not found wanting. It has no problem saying that not only is it going to increase it in October, but it is going to do the same to you in 2027, the same to you in 2028, the same to you in 2029 and the same to you again in 2030. This Government knows one thing about the future, which is that it is going to put additional pressure on ordinary people.

It is striking that what we are talking about here is additional taxes on people, some of whom are already struggling to meet their needs. Sinn Féin opposes increasing carbon taxes. They are unfair, and they do nothing for the climate or the environment where alternatives do not exist or are unaffordable. It is a tax on people trying to heat their homes or to get from A to B. The kicker is that the more the Government fails in delivering affordable green electricity and public transport, the more it collects on carbon tax because people have no option. It is a regressive tax, plain and simple.

We are in the middle of a cost-of-living challenge for so many people. People are getting hammered by costs. This started long before the attacks on Iran that sent the energy markets into chaos. It has been unrelenting for years. Real wages have stagnated as prices have continued to go up. That was the reality for people up and down this country when the price of fuel spiked in early March, when Ministers were more concerned with their St. Patrick's Day trips than taking action to protect the Irish people. It was sustained pressure from Sinn Féin, including legislation that I brought before this House on 10 March, that dragged the Government into acting. It took three and a half weeks of mounting pressure on the Government to force it to finally do something. Not only was it late in coming, but its initial response was a disgrace and barely scratched the surface of what was needed. It was the catalyst that drove people onto the streets in their thousands in the fuel protests.

We only have to look at it through the eyes of those at the sharpest end. Farmers and farm contractors were watching the price of green diesel almost doubling. What was the Government’s response? It was to cut the cost by 3 cent when the price went up from 90 cent to €1.60. That was the response of the Government after it had increased by 80 cent. People were gobsmacked, and that anger began to build as the reality bit home. Businesses were going to go under and jobs were on the line, but this Government did not seem to care. That is what the 3 cent cut in the price of green diesel meant to so many.

The message went out loud and clear that you were on your own. That was the message from this Government. That message demanded a response and, by God, did this Government get that response in the form of the fuel protests. All the disruption, all the tension and all the loss of income could have been avoided if the Government had listened. Instead, it decided to threaten the protesters and to stoke up tensions further.

The protests might have been spearheaded by farmers, farm contractors and hauliers, but their demands were much broader than just their own sector.

That is why they garnered support right across Irish society, despite the disruption that comes along with protests. They want direct cuts at the pumps that would help everyone. They called for excise duty cuts to home heating oil. That is why and how the protests tapped into the wider anger at the cost-of-living crisis, an anger that comes from feeling that it is just one thing after another. When we are talking about fuel costs, it is part of a wider picture. Right now there are many homes that have not had home heating oil since March. People are still feeling that they are getting absolutely hammered by the cost of petrol and diesel. Green diesel is far too expensive at the pumps. That is where we are at right now. The Government can pat itself on the back all it likes but that anger has not gone away.

The problem is that the legislation the Minister of State has brought forward today, the Finance Bill, will be enacted next month, in July. At the end of that month, what is going to happen? According to this Finance Bill that the Government is asking us to vote for, the price of diesel will go up by 32 cent and the price of petrol by 27 cent. What planet is the Government living on? People need support. The idea that this House will be in recess, that Ministers will be on holiday and that these prices will go up on 1 August is simply not acceptable. Nobody can predict, with certainty, oil prices in the future but the public deserves to know that there is a plan in place. The Houses of the Oireachtas will need to pass legislation to allow for an extension. These Houses are set to rise for the summer in mid-July. That leaves the Government with just a matter of weeks to bring forward any financial motions that are needed. Despite that looming cliff edge, everyone is being left in the dark. If prices stay at the current levels, then there needs to be an extension. Prices cannot be allowed to go up by 32 cent, as provided for in this legislation. What is the Government's answer to this? It has been mute on this issue so far. If that decision has not been made, then the Government should, at the very least, be able to tell the people when the decision will be made.

I will finish with one other cost-of-living issue. People shopping online are about to be hit with an additional €3 charge per item in parcels originating outside the European Union, including from Britain, as new EU custom rules come into effect next month, on 1 July. Many people simply do not know what they are about to be hit with. Shoppers beware is the message here. Somebody who buys three products from Amazon in Britain or from British online retail store, for example, like a pen, a notebook and a keyring, will have to pay an additional €9 on customs, with VAT added on top of that €9. At a time when people are under serious pressure from the cost of living, the last thing they need is another unexpected charge. Ireland is uniquely exposed because of online shopping and how it is integrated with Britain. For many households, buying everyday items online has become a normal part of life. The concerns that were raised this week by An Post and others cannot be ignored. If these changes are going to result in additional costs, delays and disruption for people, then the Government needs to act. Nobody argues against the need to ensure that products entering the EU meet proper standards but let us be clear, these measures were intended to tackle high-volume, low quality imports, not to leave ordinary people facing extra charges every time they shop online. The Government should be pressing for these changes to be stopped and reworked to ensure that people are protected. We need to see leadership on this because people cannot be left paying the price for these new rules. It will cause chaos and the fraudsters will have a field day. More importantly, people are going to be out a serious amount of money in their pockets as a result of this.

Deputy Mairéad Farrell

This legislation is a suite of reluctant half-measures, a package that does not meet the challenge of high fuel prices. Once this legislation is enacted petrol, diesel and home heating oil will continue to be unaffordable for hundreds of thousands of people and that is just not good enough. We know that it is not just the cost of fuel that people are struggling with. A package to reduce the cost of fuel is so desperately needed because the Government has let the cost of living spiral out of control for the past five years. There are thousands of working people who cannot make ends meet and who do not have a cent in savings. There are thousands of families who are slipping into debt because they just cannot cover their rent, grocery and energy bills every single month. These people desperately need a break. They need the Government to finally step up and end the rip off.

This legislation is an admission that the Government's own policies are failing. If carbon taxes worked, the Government would not have to delay the planned increases to them. By delaying them, the Government is acknowledging the obvious, that alternatives to carbon-intensive fuels do not exist for many people. A pause in carbon tax increases is needed because rural people have no alternative to using home heating oil and travelling in petrol cars. It is incredibly unfair that these people continue to face artificially inflated energy prices that are pushing many of them into fuel poverty. Fuel support measures are so desperately needed, not only because of this recent spike in energy prices but because the Government has let the cost of living spiral out of control for the last five years.

In just three weeks, over 1 million households who get their energy from Electric Ireland will see their energy bills skyrocket. The biggest energy provider in the State is hiking up gas prices by 7.7% and electricity prices by 8%. What does this legislation do for them? Energy companies have been given free rein. The Government needs to call this out for what it is, namely price gouging by a few big energy companies. We know that these big energy companies are already selling energy to households at three times the wholesale cost. We know that our energy prices, which used to be the lowest in the EU, are now the highest among all EU states. They are not just marginally higher but a shocking 52% higher than the average EU country. What do these rogue energy companies want now? They want to hike both electricity and gas prices by over double the rate of inflation. When will this Government wake up to the realities that people are facing? When is enough? When will the Government act? What the Government is doing now is sitting on its hands and overseeing a system that protects profits over people. There is no protection for children living in cold homes, for working people who cannot afford a hot shower in the morning or for the 300,000 people already in energy arrears. The only thing that is protected is the profits of energy companies. They have been allowed to hedge prices up and up, insulating their profits from any global shocks without the smallest regard for the bills that land on the kitchen tables of workers, pensioners, students and parents who are all finding it increasingly hard to get by.

For weeks we have called on the Government to introduce an emergency cost-of-living budget, with energy credits to help thousands with these rip-off prices. The Government has ignored us and our demands. This legislation is testament to the Government's approach, which is to choose delay over action. It is too late and not enough. This legislation should include energy credits of €400, cuts to the USC to put €500 back in workers' pockets and targeted supports, including a €500 payment for people with disabilities. Instead, it is a reluctant suite of half measures that fail to tackle the reality of the energy poverty that, tragically, is widespread across this State. This problem cannot be solved by energy credits alone. We need a crackdown on energy companies to end these rip-off prices once and for all. Electricity and gas are natural monopolies. This market cannot be left to its own devices. The laissez-faire approach of this Government is exactly what has created the rip off in the first place. To have affordable energy we need regulation. We need an energy regulator with the powers to tackle price gouging and a mandate to ensure affordability. This legislation does nothing to recognise energy poverty. There is a not a single cent allocated to reducing the price of home heating oil which has surged by over 80% in the past year. Energy poverty exists because of the Government's political decisions, not because we do not have enough money to put an end to it. It exists because the Government has no ambition to end it. It has become more and more clear that the Government's ambitions lie elsewhere.

Last week the Minister for foreign affairs, Deputy McEntee, told reporters that she is really ambitious for our country. She spoke of spending more on militarisation when discussing the EU's security action for Europe programme. She said that we should have taken out an EU loan at the taxpayers' expense to increase our military spending. The Oireachtas finance committee thoroughly scrutinised the security action for Europe programme and identified that it potentially conflicts with our neutrality and is incompatible with the EU's commitment to peace. The committee stated that it completely opposed the use of the EU general budget as a guarantee for these loans. However, the Minister's comments suggest that she is much more worried about impressing our friends in the EU than about listening to the concerns of the cross-party Oireachtas finance committee. Unbelievably, the Minister, Deputy McEntee, went even further in her comments. She went on to say that Britain should have been included in the security action for Europe programme, indicating, again, that she was not listening to the Oireachtas finance committee.

It is shocking that a Government Minister wants Irish taxpayers' money to guarantee loans for British military spending that is being used to support Israel and the US as they commit genocide in Gaza. The cornerstone of our foreign policy has always been our neutrality and this Government is taking a wrecking ball to it. The shift towards militarisation and away from neutrality that is being pursued by this Government is an expensive and dangerous agenda that does nothing to serve the interests of the working people. Our national security relies on our neutrality. To think that today we are talking about not having the money to support working people who are unable to put food on the table and who are unable to meet the electricity bills they have - people who are thinking about whether they have the finance to pay energy bills if they put their electricity on and put their heating on. At the same time we have the Government telling us that it wants to go further in its militarisation agenda and it wants to go further in supporting the security action for Europe, SAFE, programme, about which the finance committee of this Dáil raised serious concerns.

There is a serious question about where this Government's policies and interests lie because they do not lie with those working people, they do not lie with pensioners and they do not lie with those people who are €1,400 worse off as a result of the budget of last year. It is the people with disabilities who have said to the Government that enough is enough. They do not have the money to meet their daily needs but instead there seems to be enough money for militarisation and enough money to want the SAFE programme to go even further and to include Britain in that.

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan

While we are broadly supportive of the measures in this Bill, I have to say that this is not a sustainable approach. The Social Democrats believe there needs to be targeted measures and investment that will permanently bring down the cost of living. That has completely failed in the Government's approach. The Government has failed to take action to help the pensioners who are unable to heat their homes. The whole issue of pensioners and people on low incomes who are reliant on home heating oil has not been properly addressed. The Government has failed to help renters who cannot make ends meet. Indeed, this Government has made the cost-of-living crisis even worse for renters in terms of the increased rents they are facing, putting an already very struggling and exposed group of people under more pressure again. The Government is failing to help families to put food on the table.

We read the reports today from Family Carers Ireland on the work it did when it spoke to 3,000 carers. It talks about the financial isolation they are under and the financial strain that is making their world shrink. Thousands of carers are saying they are cutting back on food and heat to make ends meet while at the same time they are paying out for crucial equipment such as wheelchairs for their loved ones, which of course should be funded by the public system. It is absolutely outrageous that given the resources at the disposal of this Government, this is not being properly addressed.

The measures in the Bill are untargeted and they ignore the root cause of Ireland's affordability crisis. Unfortunately, the war in the Middle East is showing no sign of coming to an end and the energy crisis is not going anywhere. The impact of this Finance Bill, which will cost half a billion euro, will soon be forgotten. Consider what has happened with home heating oil and the increases of 67% and almost 70% between February and March of this year. This has been the sharpest increase anywhere in the European Union. The people reliant on home heating oil can often be older people and people on low incomes. In rural areas a lot of people who are on lower incomes are very heavily affected by that. They have not been properly supported by the measures in this Bill.

One of the core increases in inflation has been driven by energy bills increasing by 15.5%. People simply cannot afford these increases. Ireland has the highest electricity bills in Europe. Over 300,000 households are in arrears and this is a direct result of a baffling failure to invest in our infrastructure. It is incredible that since Fine Gael has been in office, since 2011, we have no offshore wind farms. The one wind farm we did have has been decommissioned since, so we have actually gone backwards in that respect. Last year we lost over half a billion euro worth of wind energy, which was wasted because our crumbling grid infrastructure could not cope with that wind energy. We are an island on the edge of the Atlantic, yet we are not availing of this. We should be a net exporter of wind energy but we are nowhere near it because of this Government's failures.

We see too the issues with pensioner poverty. Incredible and stark figures have been released by the Central Statistics Office, CSO, showing that the consistent poverty rate for those over the age of 65 increased by 70% in just one year. People who have worked and done their very best all their lives are being pushed into poverty at a time when they should be supported in their retirement years.

The Social Democrats put forward proposals on this, for example, the targeted €400 energy credits for households earning less than €70,000 a year. That would be a start and would make a bit of a difference. We also need to invest in things like solar for all, which is our plan there. Existing grants would be doubled for people who want to install solar panels. We could make solar panels a realistic option for people on lower and middle incomes. It would be for those who are not covered by current schemes and those who cannot really avail of the current grants because they do not have the matching funds. This would be a once-off investment that would bring down people's energy bills, and bring them down year after year. It would be a long-term investment, it would help us meet our climate targets and it would reduce our country's exposure to energy crisis shocks. It is the kind of thinking we need but that is sorely lacking.

Let us look at this Government's budget promises and the promises it made at election time. For example, affordable childcare was to be cut to €200 per month. Instead, we have seen absolutely minimal progress on that. There were promises that third level fees will be phased out. Instead they were actually increased. There was a promise of a cost-of-disability payment. A €500 payment was meant to be introduced but in the last budget we saw the incomes of disabled people actually slashed by up to €1,400 because of decisions that this Government made. Childcare in Ireland is exorbitantly expensive and very difficult to access. This is making the cost-of-living crisis even more difficult for families.

We have record numbers of people now homeless. Shockingly, there are 5,604 children living without a home, which is absolutely devastating. Ar an gcéad dul síos, déarfaidh mé go bhfuil rudaí an-deacair do dhaoine. Rinne an tAire Stáit na roghanna míchearta. Tá na tosaíochtaí míchearta aige. Tá níos mó agus níos mó daoine á mbrú i dtreo na bochtaineachta ag an Rialtas. Tá rudaí go dona, go háirithe mar gheall go ndearna an Rialtas na roghanna míchearta.

I also want to address the situation of the workers from Northside Home Care who are taking industrial action this week. They work long and hard hours taking care of the elderly. This is another group of people who are really suffering under this cost-of-living crisis. Despite the incredibly important work they do, they are on just above the minimum wage. People who have been working there for 20 plus years are still just above the minimum wage. There is no recognition of the work they are doing. I call on the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, and his Government colleagues to actually intervene to ensure a proper wage for people doing home care work. There should be a sectoral wage agreement for that sector. It is utterly indefensible. These workers do an incredibly important job. Whether they are doing it at not-for-profit companies, or in the private sector rather than directly employed by the HSE, they are not getting the HSE going rate. It is grossly unfair. The Government needs to stop sitting on its hands on this and actually take some action.

The measures in this Finance Bill follow a familiar pattern from this Government. Instead of targeting resources where they are needed most, the money is spread evenly reducing its impact and, crucially, the Government is failing to invest in measures that will reduce the cost of living permanently. That is what the Government needs to be doing. I do wonder will this Government ever learn. If it was serious about tackling the cost-of-living crisis, it would target resources where they are needed most. Crucially, this would build resilience and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. That is absolutely essential for tackling the cost-of-living crisis and preparing us for the next one, and for helping us to meet our climate targets. Unfortunately, this Finance Bill does neither.

Deputy Tom Brabazon

Aontaím leis an Teachta O'Callaghan sa mhéid is go raibh sé ag tacú le muintir Northside Home Care. I fully agree with Deputy O' Callaghan in relation to Northside Home Care issue. It is really important that the considerable and important work done by these people is acknowledged by the Government and that they at least get equal pay for equal work.

With regard to the Finance Bill, my constituents in Dublin Bay North are really feeling the pinch, and particularly with rising energy costs.

I have spoken with many who have told me first hand of the difficulty and pressure they are facing in meeting their household costs. I welcome the measures the Government has taken. Thankfully, we have seen some reductions at the pumps in respect of fuel for transport but that is not to say the problem has been fully resolved. It is clear from the people I have been engaging with that energy costs remain a serious pressure for households and families. Interim supports are certainly welcome but we also have to bring forth longer-term measures to reduce bills.

It is very difficult to listen to elderly people who in the autumn of their years require a lot of heat in their houses and are simply not putting the heat on. Just this week I had one constituent tell me how their gas-electricity supplier has informed them their annual electricity bill will increase by almost 10%, and annual gas bill by 11%. Electric Ireland announced this week it is to increase its prices by 8%. By any measure, these are extraordinary increases and any household would struggle to cushion such costs. There is understandable frustration among the public when bills continue to rise at a time when households are already under considerable pressure. We need to see transparency from the energy providers and greater consumer protection to ensure the public is not being price-gouged by companies which are earning extraordinary profits.

The recent report that found Ireland has the highest household energy costs in the EU and the report published in recent days by the Household Energy Price Index that found that Dublin is the most expensive capital city in the EU for electricity are very concerning. My constituents are working hard and doing their utmost to make ends meet. They cannot take any more increases or pressure. I urge the Government to keep additional measures on its mind between now and the budget, keep this under consideration and invest in implementing long-term solutions to bring down bills. We must do everything we can to help households in meeting rising costs and ensure they have something to show for their hard work at the end of each week.

Deputy Cormac Devlin

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on the Finance Bill 2026, which gives effect to the cost-of-living package introduced by the Government earlier this year. These supports include 32 cent off a litre of diesel, 27 cent off a litre of petrol and other measures which are not small adjustments. They are part of a significant €750 million package to support families and businesses as we deal with the energy shock caused by the continuing conflict in the Middle East. The Government’s €750 million intervention was a serious response to the situation and one of the most significant across the EU. The Government also deferred the carbon tax increase that was due on 1 May. That deferral runs until 14 October and may need to be extended if energy prices remain elevated. It protects households heating their homes with kerosene, natural gas and solid fuels and is targeted relief at the moment people need it most.

I also acknowledge the supports provided for the transport sector. The diesel rebate scheme has been increased from 7.5 cent to 12 cent per litre and backdated to January. There is new road transporters support scheme worth €40 million a month. There is also €100 million scheme for farmers, contractors and fishers. Our hauliers, coach operators and farmers keep this country moving. They deserve that backing.

The situation in the Middle East seems to shift on an almost hourly basis. We all hope that a durable ceasefire can be achieved that gives way to permanent peace in the region. However, it is clear the energy shock caused by the conflict will continue in the short term.

Turning to budget 2027, I call on the Minister to ensure working families and individuals are supported in the budget with a decent tax package. I was disappointed income tax bands were not adjusted last year. This had a negative impact on workers and must be rectified in this year’s upcoming budget. Further progress must also be made on the USC. Equally, given inflation, we need to see a decent package for social protection with particular emphasis on fuel allowance. A general energy credit should also be examined if energy prices remain high as we enter the winter.

More generally, I echo calls for adjustments to capital taxation rates and bands. I hope the Minister will consider the call I made last year to increase the small gift exemption from €3,000 per year. It has not been increased since the euro was introduced quite some time ago. I support calls for a more general overhaul of the inheritance tax system to give everyone a lifetime allowance which would be far more equitable.

In the limited time available, however, it is not possible to cover everything I would like to raise. I have highlighted a range of measures via parliamentary questions but I would like to see supports increase for schemes such as the cycle to work programme and to expand them to the self-employed. I would also like to see increased investment in capital projects, particularly in public transport. We badly need more buses, trains and Luas lines, and especially the expansion of the Luas line to Bray. Given the increase in the population in my constituency of Dún Laoghaire, the Government must increase investment in local infrastructure that provides for critical services, such as the construction of a new Garda station in Cherrywood and a primary healthcare centre in Loughlinstown.

Value for money is important and I call on the Minister to examine some of the disruptive road interventions being planned across Dublin to ensure they deliver a real public benefit. Removing bus lanes, turning lanes, roundabouts or sliplanes along the N11 in particular, which was recently refurbished at a very significant cost, do not strike me as good use of public funds, particularly at this time. This funding would be far better invested in housing, upgrading public transport services or EV-charging infrastructure, which is critical to support the shift to green energy. I look forward to engaging with the Minister over the coming months ahead of budget 2027 to ensure it reflects priorities and supports hard-pressed households and indeed businesses.

Deputy Thomas Gould

The first thing I want to say on the Finance Bill we are discussing is that it goes to show how this Government just does not get it. It is another failure at a time when the Government had the money and knew people were struggling. It could have stepped in. If people throw their minds back to late February and March when people came on to the street, remember the anger that was there. The Minister of State and the Government went on holidays for St. Patrick’s Day to get out of here while people were paying double for home heating oil and struggling to pay their bills.

Deputy Robert Troy

I met protesters on the march. I did not go anywhere. I was not booed either.

Deputy Thomas Gould

The Minister of State’s Government was not where it should have been, namely in the Dáil doing its job, protecting ordinary workers, families, pensioners, farmers, hauliers and small businesses who were, and who still are, looking for help. The Minister of State can try to interrupt me but I talk to these people. I was on the line in Whitegate, Cork city and Youghal. Those people are still feeling it today. There are more than 300,000 people in arrears with electricity. A quarter of people who get gas are in arrears.

There are people who use home heating oil who cannot pay their bills. Some people have to use their savings and some have to borrow from the credit union or family but some have to go cold because they do not have the money to put home heating oil in the tank. I know some of those people. The Minister of State might come in and say, "We are great boys" but-----

Deputy Robert Troy

Not at all.

Deputy Thomas Gould

-----Electric Ireland has 1 million customers and it is putting up the cost of electricity by 8% and gas by 7.7% and the Government is doing nothing to tackle it. What is the famous phrase? It is standing idly by while energy companies come in and gouge the market. They pile the pressure on ordinary, hard-working families and what is the Government doing? It has half a Bill instead of delivering for people. We have pensioners who are afraid to turn on the lights, boil kettles or turn on the heating. The weather might be good today but if the Minister of State was around the past couple of days, he knows there was many a night when people had to put on the heating. Where is the support for ordinary, hard-working people and families? This Bill is not it.

I was outside SuperValu in Hollyhill and a guy who is not a farmer, haulier or owner of a small business but an ordinary working man said to me that he stood by the farmers. The reason he stood by them was that somebody had to stand up and be counted and they were there.

Over the summer the price of diesel will go up by 32 cent and the price of petrol will go up by 20 cent, and the Government uses the camouflage of the summer holidays again. It will run out of here, run out the door. I am asking the Minister of State a straight question. Will he give a commitment that those prices will not go up? We also had the carbon tax increases. Has the Government any idea what ordinary people are dealing with? I live in Cork. We have a bus service that is in chaos, with buses not turning up and buses always late, and then the Government puts extra taxes on people for their diesel and their petrol.

We need supports for ordinary people. Energy credits, a cost-of-living budget for people with disabilities and a reduction in the USC for ordinary, hard-working people - these are the things that need to be delivered. I have a list of stuff here where the Government has failed. Will it not stand up now and stand with the people? We are running a huge surplus and the Government is sitting on it.

Deputy Ged Nash

I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Labour Party on this Bill, but I will speak predominantly about what is not in the Bill, more so than what is in it and the effect of its provisions.

Day in and day out, we see the impact of the cost-of-living permacrisis of the past few years. The Minister of State knows only too well - all the evidence shows this - that the impact is felt most acutely by those who are on low and middle incomes and those who depend on the State for their small incomes. We know the outside or exogenous causes of this: a global pandemic, closely followed by war on the continent of Europe and then the effects of Trump and Israel's insane folly in Iran. We can but hope that we are near the endgame of that and that fuel prices in the world's economy can get to a point where we can all catch a breath. That, I think, is the one thing that unites us all in this House. Any of us with any sense, however, know that no government, regardless of how fortunate this country is in terms of the surpluses we post year in, year out, can insulate every home and business from the effects of inflation. Anybody who pretends we can is simply playing political games. What divides us here is how the resources we do have to help have been deployed and on what basis.

The truth is that close to €750 million was dished out to a noisy group that stopped much of the country from getting to work to buy its silence and to placate it, and that has now been entrenched in this legislation. The other truth is that PAYE workers looked on at the events after last Easter and the reality dawned on them that this must be how you do business with this Government. That is not a good place to be for any government. I would not read too much, if I were the Tánaiste, into a by-election win in Galway. Local circumstances were at play there and candidate quality and so on. PAYE workers and the trade union movement will, I guarantee the Minister of State, be much more muscular when it comes to pursuing pay claims and improved conditions based on the message sent after last Easter's fraught events. The silent discontent in households across the country is real because the impact of this cost-of-living crisis is very real. It is affecting people day in, day out, the choices they make and the limited resources they have.

All this is playing out before we see a likely two or three hikes to variable mortgage interest rates over the next few months and the inevitable energy price rises as we face into the winter, as if domestic energy prices in Ireland were not already high enough. Allied with ever-rising grocery price rises, no sign of the €200-a-month childcare we were promised or a break in college fees, rising health insurance and back-to-school costs and so on, households are in very real and present trouble. However, you would not think it from this Finance Bill or from the Government's actions over the last few weeks and months.

Much of this difficulty can be traced back to decisions made in budget 2026. Here is the truth: no matter what way you want to spin it, PAYE workers were left behind. It is why we in Labour Party produced a number of weeks ago, and the Minister of State responded to this particular initiative, a mini-budget, for the want of a better description, to try to assist working families between now and the budget. These are people who have been told to wait for a breather from the cost-of-living crisis that is so badly affecting households across the country. We know that in the budget, as I said, PAYE workers were left behind and we know why. Core social welfare payment increases have been eroded by inflation. The tax package favoured hospitality over working people. This Finance Bill gives the Government the chance to be more ambitious for working people, who are the real engines and the real producers of goods and resources in this economy. It gives the Government the chance to change course and to be more ambitious than has hitherto been the case.

However, in last year's budget, and it is important that we reflect on this, it was decided that at a full-year cost to the taxpayer of €680 million, the VAT rate in the hospitality sector would go from 13% to 9%. I have heard people argue that this is Government policy. We know it was Fine Gael policy before the 2024 general election, but so is the indexation of PAYE tax bands, rates and credits. We all know politics is about choices. I am comfortable with that and people in this House should be comfortable about it. It is the bread and butter of politics. I think the Minister of State will agree that politics is fundamentally about the generation or the creation of resources and how we redistribute those finite and precious resources. The bizarre decision was taken to cut VAT for the hospitality sector to boost the bottom line of restaurants and cafés instead of providing some respite to working people. I have said it time and again and the Minister of State has seen all the evidence as much as I have. The objective, impartial evidence shows that this cut will favour the chains, which do not need it, rather than the small independent operators that we know are finding the going tough. What makes it all the more bizarre is the fact that we are using tax policy and how we distribute our precious resources to narrow the tax base for a sector that, in its totality, is adding jobs by the week. That makes no economic sense whatsoever. What is more is that all of this is being paid for by the working class having to forgo a small breather on their income tax, with hard-earned pay rises swallowed up by inflation and the failure to ensure that rates, bands and credits kept pace with the very inflation we are trying to combat at the moment and that has proven to be so problematic for consumers across the country.

All told, because of those fateful decisions taken last October and reflected in the Finance Act giving effect to the budget measures, what we are dealing with now is effective pay cuts for many low- and middle-income workers at the very time when the cost of everything is going up. It is reported in The Irish Times today that the Tánaiste said yesterday - I found this remarkable - when he was talking about his favoured retail savings and investment scheme, which he has announced and reannounced about 562 times now, that PAYE workers are "irked" over the fact that income tax bands, rates and credits were not adjusted to allow for inflation this year. They are more than irked. They are incredibly annoyed about this because they can feel the impact in their day-to-day budgets and on their inability to manage their weekly and monthly budgets and household costs. That PAYE workers are irked is the understatement of the year. They have been left behind. Wait until that particular measure goes live on 1 July when people understand that the money that should have been going to them for some tax adjustments is going to McDonald's, Supermac's, KFC and so on. It is absolutely bizarre. It is bad economics and it is even worse politics. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will have some explaining to do to constituents when they realise what is happening.

Nobody is saying for a moment that parts of the hospitality sector do not need some structural reforms. They do, but decisions taken to reintroduce a lazy rinse-and-repeat VAT cut that has been around in one form or another since 2011 is not the answer to the structural problems small hospitality businesses face. The answer is addressing once and for all the ridiculously high energy charges in this country for high consumers of energy like the hospitality sector. It is also a real reform of the commercial rates system for good bricks-and-mortar businesses around the country that employ significant cohorts of people. We must also ensure that staff in those sectors can have a real career. That used to be the case when organisations like CERT trained people to a very high international standard to be chefs, hospitality managers and so on. That is what we need to look at rather than the short-term sugar rush of VAT cuts, which improve the bottom line for a short period of time for hospitality businesses that are finding it difficult.

If the Minister of State is serious about giving working people a break he would use this Bill to address that issue, and use the resources that we have available to index PAYE workers' tax-rate bands and credits back to January to ensure that there is some respite for such workers. We know from experience that will not be the case. PAYE workers are being told in this Bill that they are going to have to wait. We have been told time and again that with the excise duty cuts this Bill will legislate to bring into primary legislation, based on the financial resolutions a number of weeks ago, there is some respite from high prices at the pumps for diesel and petrol for PAYE workers. That is an afterthought. PAYE workers certainly were not the target and the focus of this measure. When these measures were first announced a couple of months ago, the Labour Party said there was nothing in them for PAYE workers. There is nothing in this Bill for PAYE workers either and the Government will reap a political whirlwind because of that.

Deputy Joe Neville

I wish to speak today against the backdrop of the budget last year and the economic situation Ireland finds itself in. There is no doubt we find ourselves in a strange economic place. We are in a place where we have budget surpluses. We are not in an era of budget deficits, which was something we all grew up with in this State. It was a situation that came against us with the crash. This is also a situation that is widespread across Europe and in many areas across the world.

We are in a situation where we have billions of a surplus. That brings a need for big and difficult decisions, some of which were taken in the budget. The easy thing is to continue to spend. We have done a lot of spending. We have significantly increased our public spending over the last number of years. That is something of which we always have to be conscious. We also have to be conscious of maintaining fiscal discipline and ensure that we do not just spend the tax receipts that are coming in because, ultimately, we do not know exactly how long they will last.

We have a situation where we have windfall taxes of up to €20 billion. We have a budget surplus of €9 billion or €10 billion. We know that if the situation changes or the headwinds change the Irish economy would be in a very different situation and we would not have the money to back it up, but ultimately that is not the situation that exists here. The strong economic planning of this Government, and of previous governments, has led us into this situation where we do have that money. What this Government has decided to do is to spend heavily on infrastructure, which is something I would consider a significant need. As a councillor for a number of years in north Kildare, I saw the growth in the development of housing, which was obviously welcome, but we need the infrastructure to go with it. This is what the budget plans for and what future budgets over the next five years will continue to do. We need schools, roads, rail lines, wastewater plants and football pitches for people. That is one strong section of this budget and something that we have ensured that we deliver.

It is very easy to write cheques for this and that and to keep increasing spending. That is broadly what populists wish to do. I do not mean just in Ireland but across the world. We have seen the difficulties in many countries where populists have taken over politically. In Ireland we are lucky that we do not necessarily have that division, but at the same time those risks and demands exist.

As we continue to spend, there is a risk that we are not competitive for SMEs, which is another area I am very passionate about. We need to ensure that Irish companies are working in step with those US and other foreign-based companies that come to Ireland. Ultimately, indigenous Irish businesses and SMEs are what will keep us afloat, and are what have kept us afloat through the good and the bad. They are the people we rely on, so we need to ensure that they remain competitive and that we can support them.

Most of the decisions we made in this budget were to support local businesses and ensure that we got extra housing delivery. They were the type of decisions that we made. This is one of five budgets for this Government. There will be an aligned approach in the next budget. We might see a variance from a personal income perspective but that will go along with the budgetary and housing supports in this one.

Research and development tax credits might not necessarily get the kudos, plaudits or headlines but improvements in that regard are what keep those large businesses in place in Ireland. Companies like Intel, which is based in north Kildare, can benefit from such a tax credit, but small companies can also benefit from it. Tax credits are the sort of initiative and incentive that make sure we have jobs in our country. While this budget might not have garnered the same headlines from a populist point of view, what it did was put the economy on a solid footing. It ensured that we did not waste the money over the coming years. What we have done is put it into capital spending, infrastructure, businesses and housing, so we can ensure that in the coming years it could be the source of future economic success.

Ultimately, we are going to be here and we are going to be judged before the next election. I want to ensure Ireland is on a good economic footing and that people in Ireland can benefit. A short win today, politically, would not necessarily be of benefit in the long term. I see this budget as being one of five budgets to ensure the future of Ireland. I welcome the initiatives that were put in place in the budget and in the Finance Bill we are talking about today.

Deputy Naoise Ó Muirí

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate today. The Finance Bill before the House is a reminder of how exposed we are as a country to fluctuations in global fuel markets. While I fully support the measures being discussed today, they are but a temporary solution to a longer term problem. To deal with it, we need to consider longer term measures.

To build energy independence, we need to look closer to home for the changes that are required. The last budget extended the €400 tax exemption on income earned by households from selling electricity back to the grid to December 2028. That was a welcome step but it is just that - a step. Households that make the leap to solar panels should be further supported through an increase in that exemption. As solar becomes more advanced, many households can now expect to export more than €400 to the grid each year. However, upfront installation costs remain high and act as a disincentive. Raising the exemption to €800 would send a clear signal to households that investing in solar is practical, supported by us, attractive and worthwhile.

Alongside panels, batteries are becoming more advanced and more affordable. When we add a battery to our solar PV system, we unlock a whole range of extra benefits, from greater energy independence to lower bills and protection in the event of a blackout. Locally, a 5 kWh battery costs between €1,700 and €3,000, with larger capacities more expensive still. Unlike PV panels, there is no grant available for batteries, meaning the upfront cost is out of the reach of many ordinary households. We should look to incentivise the purchase of batteries. The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has acknowledged that battery storage solutions have become increasingly viable. His Department is reviewing how microgeneration and battery storage could help homes and businesses reduce energy costs and reduce their dependence on the national grid.

The review is welcome but recent volatility underlines the fact that we need to move faster, particularly in advance of the upcoming budget for next year. Incremental, well-targeted changes made over the lifetime of this Government will deliver a real difference. We have a clear opportunity to reduce our dependence on global fuel markets and fossil fuels and deliver a more secure energy future for households across Ireland.

Deputy Martin Kenny

We recognise that so many people were suffering so much as a consequence of the fuel crisis that many of them took to the streets and expressed huge frustration about a situation that was outside their control and about which they felt the Government could do much more. We all acknowledge the Government was not able to stop the war that caused the crisis in the first place but it could certainly have done more to ensure people could get a break, particularly when it came to home heating oil. In my part of the country and, I am sure, in the Minister of State's area, the vast majority of people use home heating as their source of fuel. Older people, people with disabilities and others found it difficult, having come through a long, hard winter when they were already hit with the cost-of-living crisis, that the cost of a fill of oil went through the roof and the Government did absolutely nothing about it. That is one of the big frustrations people had. They felt so let down by all of that.

Families who had to bring children to school and those who run small businesses and so forth also found their costs spiralling and, again, the Government did the minimum to help them. That was their experience. It is why we proposed that whatever reduction should come, it should come at the pump so that everybody would benefit from it. It would benefit hauliers, those who own a school bus that brings children to school but also people who cannot get a school bus and have to bring their children to school themselves. There are many people who have no option but to do that. People who go to work felt the Government simply was not listening. That is why there was such frustration and people took to the streets at that time.

Since then, prices have stabilised at a high level and have not come down enough for people who are struggling to survive. The squeezed middle are often talked about. People cannot manage to pay a mortgage because they are under so much pressure. They cannot manage to pay the car loan and everything that is hitting them at all angles. Then, they suddenly found the price of fuel, home heating oil and everything else going through the roof. The Government did little to help them and they felt they were left alone. That is what brought people to the streets. These people were not crazies. They were just ordinary people who felt they were being totally let down.

While the Finance Bill is about trying to put in place mechanisms to deliver the measures the Government put in place in March and April, it is really an opportunity for us to tell the Government it needs to wake up to ordinary people's struggles. Ordinary people feel the Government has opportunities to do so much more but continually hides away and pretends that, somehow or other, everything is out of its control and it has to put away money in a big piggy bank for a rainy day. People feel it is raining on them right now. That is the frustration we have and the frustration felt by the vast majority of ordinary decent people who just want to get on with their lives. They want to have a chance to do a little bit better than their parents before them and to see a future for their children coming after them. That is the problem for so many people. It was said to me the other day that in the past, back in the 1970s and 1980s in this country when things were terrible, people could buy a house and have a future. Today, people are saying their children will not be able to do those things.

These are the issues that are impacting people. We need to recognise that the Government has a role to play in assisting people through the ordinary things in their lives as well as the big things in the economy.

Deputy Paul Murphy

I had a look at petrol and diesel prices before I came into the Chamber. The Circle K on Belgard Road in Tallaght is charging €1.85 per litre for diesel and €1.84 per litre for petrol, even after the two rounds of VAT and excise cuts. A year ago, the average price for diesel was €1.76 and for petrol, it was €1.68. There is, therefore, still a big additional cost for ordinary people. In my constituency, many people are basically forced to drive because public transport is so bad and inadequate. It depends on where they are going, obviously. The least the Government should do during the fuel crisis - it should have done it a long time ago but it should do it now - is abolish fares for public transport and put on a load of additional buses so the service is made frequent and reliable. The other thing we need is to have price caps on petrol and diesel, so that every VAT and excise cut we see is not swallowed up by price increases. People need certainty that prices will not go any higher than €1.75 per litre, which is the price cap in People Before Profit's emergency price controls Bill. We first introduced that Bill during the previous energy crisis. It is even more important now when oil prices are so volatile and every day is bringing different news about when or if Trump and Netanyahu's illegal war will finally end.

The Finance Bill is only a drop in the ocean compared to the worsening cost-of-living crisis people are facing every single day. It is not only motorists who need help with rising costs. It is everyone who is forced to cut back on their weekly shop. It is the four in ten parents who say they go without or with less so their kids can eat properly. It is everyone who cannot pay rents that the Government has decided should go higher and higher in order to attract in more vultures to resolve our supply problem, ultimately some day long into the future. It is everyone who is behind on their energy bills, hundreds of thousands of people, because prices are the highest in Europe. It is disabled people who had about €1,400 cruelly taken from them in the most recent budget, despite the Government having billions of euro in surplus. Now, we have the ESB announcing another 8% increase in electricity and gas prices. People are at the end of their tether; they just have not got it. They cannot be bled dry by the Government, landlords and energy companies any longer. The rip-off off has to stop.

Apart from the electricity price increases we are seeing - we saw a report last week from Friends of the Earth - it is because this Government is beholden to big tech. It is because the Government has laid out the red carpet for big tech and their data centres to use as much electricity as they want. We heard this morning in the Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence that we are potentially on track to reaching the point where data centres use as much electricity as the rest of the economy and the rest of society combined. They currently use well over 20% of electricity, but we are on track to them using 50% of electricity in this country. That is pushing up prices for ordinary people in this country who have already paid hundreds of euro as a consequence of that. The Government likes to defend this position with unfounded, ridiculous claims in terms of jobs. It has been trotting out a KPMG report claiming 870,000-odd jobs are related to data centres. The report counted every job that uses cloud computing, thereby fundamentally missing the point of what it is for something to be in the cloud. It means it can be accessed anywhere, which means there is no benefit to it being around the corner from us or even in the same country, as opposed to being somewhere else. It is interesting that the Government used to answer questions in the past about how many people are directly working for data centres. Five or six years ago, however, it simply stopped answering questions about that. It just refused to answer that question and instead talked about all the people who benefit from the data centres. However, if we read what comes from the data centre lobbyists themselves, they let the cat out of the bag. There was an article in The Irish Times in December of last year in which Tom Parlon, the representative of the data centre lobbyists in this country, spoke about them directly employing 1,800 people.

How many jobs are lost as a consequence of the data centres and the use of AI to replace jobs? We have seen that in Covalen and we are seeing it elsewhere in the economy. More jobs are being lost as a result of these data centres than are being added. We need to tackle this.

A serious plan to tackle the cost-of-living crisis simultaneously involves tackling the climate crisis. It means trying to reduce energy usage instead of expanding it, having no more data centres, getting people out of cars into free and frequent public transport and having a nationalised, not-for-profit electricity system that drives investment in renewables. With that comes price controls so that we give people certainty while the transition takes place.

The other thing that has to happen is a fight for higher wages. A few weeks ago, I introduced a Bill that would guarantee apprentices and young workers are paid at least the national minimum wage. That should not sound like a very big ask and it is should not require legislation. Right now, craft apprentices are being paid as little as €7.67 an hour, which is €6.48 less than the national minimum wage. We have a national minimum wage that is inadequate and is recognised not to be the living wage and then we legally say that young people - those under the age of 20 - and apprentices are legally allowed to be paid a lot less than this inadequate minimum wage. On what planet are people meant to survive on €7.67 an hour?

A first-year motor mechanic wrote to me after I introduced the Bill, saying that he is working 40 hours a week on €6.20 an hour. He is expected to pay for his own tools with only a €250 tool allowance. He points out that to even get an apprenticeship in most trades, you have to have a driver's licence, so he has to pay extortionate insurance on top of car loan repayments. He is walking away with €250 a week and is left with only €120 after bills. He says that "taking into account the rising cost of living and the expenses of day-to-day life, it's nearly unbearable and as a worker, I feel disheartened and it's hard to get out of bed in the morning some days." On top of this, he says "the greed of trade employers in Ireland is sickening". I could not agree more. That greed and the dismissive attitude of this Government towards young workers are directly contributing to the housing crisis because it means there are not enough skilled construction workers to build the houses that we need. There are not enough skilled mechanics to run the bus service properly. A lack of mechanics is the main reason that Dublin Bus and Go-Ahead constantly give for ghost buses and cancellations. Another 20-year-old apprentice wrote to me to say:

The lack of young lads and women going into trade is because of the terrible pay that every employer in Ireland's paying them. I'm looking to move out of home and buy or build a house but I can't afford to do so because I can't get a mortgage from the bank because I'm an apprentice and making far less than the minimum wage.

The situation of young workers and apprentices sums up the cost-of-living crisis for many people in this country. Wages are far too low and the cost of living is far too high. What is the Government doing in response? The Low Pay Commission recommended abolishing subminimum wage rates for young workers back in March 2024. That was after we had proposed a Bill to abolish these rates for young workers in the Dáil. It passed Second Stage. The Government placed a timed amendment of one year on it, the year passed and the Government said we needed to look into it. The Low Pay Commission looked into it, as did the ESRI, and it recommended that they be abolished. The Government then promised to look into it but then about a year ago, it said it was not going to do anything on it until 2029. It would not make a decision and we do not even have a commitment that it will abolish these incredible, exploitative subminimum wage rates in 2029. We just have a commitment that the Government is going to think about it in 2029. In the meantime, more and more employers are using subminimum pay rates as a loophole to avoid paying the minimum wage. The number being paid less than the minimum wage has gone up from 20%, or one in five in 2020, to 30%, or almost one in three young workers being legally paid less than the minimum wage. Now we have Fianna Fáil TDs talking about bypassing the Low Pay Commission altogether and using a different mechanism to set the minimum wage that gets rid of any benchmarking with the public sector or multinational pay rates. The only reason to do so is to keep the minimum wage artificially low in order that bosses can make even bigger profits.

It is obvious from how this Government is treating workers that it thinks it can do whatever it wants and workers will not fight back. However, the fuel protests show that when people power takes it on, the Government is weak and can be forced to crumble very quickly and give concessions. The reason the hauliers and transport operators are getting a bailout in this Bill is that they forced it out of the Government through militant protest. The lesson there for the trade union movement is that politely going into pay talks over and over and playing by the rules is getting it nowhere. The Government has proved it will only listen to militant protest. That is what workers need to do. They need to get organised into trade unions and they need to fight within those trade unions for militant action for above-inflation pay rates to ensure they are not left behind and put in a position of deeper and deeper deprivation as a consequence of the cost-of-living crisis.

Deputy Grace Boland

This Bill represents progress in a number of important areas. It reflects an effort to respond to the pressures on working people through a number of targeted tax measures, including an increase in the USC threshold; the extension of supports, such as rent tax credits and mortgage interest relief, alongside continued investment in our infrastructure and public services; measures backing innovation, research and quality jobs; regenerating towns and city centres; and measures to intensify the supply of housing. No more is that evident than in my area of Fingal where we see housing developments in every town.

It is also clear, however, that pressures remain very real for many families because for many working people, the question is not whether measures are introduced, but whether they make a meaningful difference for families. It is about whether taking on extra hours or returning to work actually pays and whether the balance between wages, taxation, childcare costs and commuting costs works in their favour. That is particularly true in fast-growing commuter areas like Fingal. In towns such as Skerries, Balbriggan, Lusk and Rush, people are working hard, often commuting long distances, raising families and contributing to their communities, yet many still feel under financial pressure.

When we talk about workforce participation, we must look at the practical realities that many families face. Across the country, many people, in particular parents of young children, are working part time, not by choice but because it is the only viable option available to them. That is where childcare becomes central. While we have seen an increase in investments in childcare and more families benefiting from supports, availability remains a real issue on the ground. In Fingal, the shortage of childcare places, in particular community childcare places, is raised with me time and again. Parents want to work more hours or return to the workforce but they simply cannot do this because there are not enough places available. If we are serious about making work pay, particularly for families, this issue has to be addressed because without accessible childcare, financial supports alone are not enough. That is why areas experiencing rapid population growth, for example, north County Dublin, must be prioritised for additional childcare provision.

Alongside this, we must continue to invest in the fundamentals that allow communities to grow. That includes our schools. North County Dublin is seeing significant population growth, particularly among young families. That growth must be matched with timely delivery of school places in modern, warm buildings and appropriate supports. The increase in special needs assistants announced in budget 2026 is very welcome but families also need certainty that overall school capacity will keep pace with demand. That is what allows communities to put down roots with confidence.

We are also seeing very substantial investments at a national level in public transport, water infrastructure and strengthening our electricity grid. These are necessary investments, particularly if we are to support housing delivery and economic growth, but we must also ensure that this investment translates into real outcomes on the ground. The public needs confidence that funding is not just being announced but is being delivered effectively. It needs to see projects completed on time, systems working as they should and services improving in a way that makes a tangible difference in people's daily lives. That responsibility sits across the State, in the Departments and agencies and across the public and Civil Service. Ultimately, this is about trust that investment leads to delivery, that policy decisions translate into real improvement and that the system is working in the best interests of the people it serves.

Taken together, taxation, childcare, commuting and infrastructure all shape how families experience our country and the economy. This Bill moves us in the right direction. As we look ahead to budget 2027, we need to go further in making work pay, particularly for families balancing work and childcare, in ensuring that infrastructure keeps pace with population growth and in making sure that the significant investment being made is delivered effectively and visibly. For many working families, the question is not whether progress is being made; it is whether they can feel it in their everyday lives.

Deputy Matt Carthy

The Bill the Minister of State has brought before the House in many ways represents everything that has been so wrong with the Government's approach to the fuel price crisis and to the broader cost-of-living crisis. Everything is too little, too late. It took far too long for the Government to listen and to accept and realise that ordinary workers, families, farmers, small businesses, coach drivers and hauliers had their backs to the wall and that people needed a bit of support and relief. The Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to take any type of action at all. Of course when it did act, in typical Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael style it did far too little. What the Government did was insufficient. Then, when it introduced schemes in respect of contractors, it took far too long to bring clarity to how some of those measures would actually work. We have found out virtually every week since that there is another cohort in the business sector that was hopeful it would benefit from the rebate but which, it transpires, gets no benefit at all. It was for all of those reasons, and because of the failure to provide adequately or within an adequate timeframe, that Sinn Féin opposed the financial resolutions brought forward by the Government.

All of this is a choice. We have had the choices of the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael parties and Independent TDs. What were those choices? To this day, there has not been a single cent of a reduction in the price of home heating oil, despite the fact that there are TDs across the Government benches who, I have no doubt, are aware of people in their constituencies who have had empty tanks for months because they cannot afford to put oil in them. They are going cold because the Government refuses to provide them with any support whatsoever or take any meaningful measures.

The average cost of diesel at one point in May, before the measures took effect, stood at €1.97. Today, the average cost of diesel is €1.88 a litre. It might be the Government's policy to have petrol and diesel at those prices on an ongoing basis, but they are too expensive for people who have no option but to use their cars to get to work. Green diesel costs nearly 50% more.

The most bizarre aspect of the financial resolutions that have come before the House is the Government's commitment to increase the carbon tax every single year until 2030, despite the irrefutable evidence that carbon taxes hit lower income people and people from rural communities hardest. Carbon taxes charge people for not changing to something that does not exist. The people I and the Minister of State represent cannot afford a new car costing €50,000, whether they have an €8,000 grant or not. They rely on their petrol or diesel car to do everything, from driving to work to driving their kids to school in some instances or to activities they are involved in, yet the Government's choice, time and again, has been to kick them in the teeth rather than give them the support they need.

Deputy Paul Nicholas Gogarty

As I and others have said in this House, the measures were too little and too late. Nevertheless, we are extending them for another period of time. I would have preferred to have seen them extended to September because I cannot see the Strait of Hormuz crisis being sorted out by then, given the incumbent in the White House. The measures are welcome insofar as they are coming forward, but they should have been for a longer duration and for greater amounts, while being cognisant at all times that the bigger picture, the strategic picture, is, as I have said previously, our energy self-sufficiency and the fact that we are slow to ramp up to self-sufficiency and cut down on the massive amounts of foreign imports for which we are paying.

In the new era in which AI will impact on certain types of jobs, we have to find other types of jobs. We have to go the vocational route because there are huge incomes to be made in data centres if someone is an electrician, for example. However, if we have demand from companies to store data in Ireland, the only way it will be done is if we have a massive surplus of capacity, which is not what we have been gearing towards.

I note, although it is not being done in this legislation, the trial EV scrappage scheme of €5,000. I welcome this measure because for some vehicles, it will bring the price of a new EV with a range of between 200 km and 300 km down to around €12,000, which is an affordable amount for a credit union loan. I welcome the measure but it needs to be put on a better footing, with more of an incentive on top. In Dublin, I have been driving a 24 kW EV for the last ten years. It has a range of about 120 km, which is sufficient most of the time, although if I am travelling down the country, I have to stop off a few times. For someone in rural Ireland, a 250 km or 300 km range goes quite quickly. We have to encourage people in rural areas to invest in these types of vehicles at an affordable rate, alongside taking up grants for solar. We need to ensure that people get fair prices for exporting home-grown energy from their solar panels and make retrofitting affordable in the first place. The roll-out of retrofitting in local authority housing remains abysmal. We are still hitting those who can least afford it.

Deputy Paul Lawless

Let us be honest about the fuel support scheme. The Government sold farmers a pup. When the price of green diesel spiked by 80% and farmers were struggling, the Government offered them 2.4 cents off per litre. It was an insult. We warned the Government on the floor of the Dáil what was going to happen. Sure enough, what happened was a revolt. When farmers and contractors went to the trouble of protesting, the Government, after several days of blackening those people, announced a bigger scheme for farmers worth €100 million. Ministers were on the radio promising €100 million and promising farmers relief. The reality was very different because the vast majority of farmers I have spoken to in County Mayo are ineligible. They cannot apply. They listened to the Minister for agriculture and many other Ministers on radio promising relief. When they looked at the detail of the scheme, they saw it is calculated so that the minimum payment is €100 and the minimum amount of fuel is 1,200 litres of green diesel from the previous year, 2025. That is the threshold. Below 1,200 litres, people cannot apply and do not qualify.

The Government has promised farmers a scheme and the vast majority of small and medium-sized farmers across Ireland are ineligible. Small beef farmers, part-time farmers, men and women who have 30, 40 or 50 suckler cows and 50 or 60 acres will not avail in the vast majority of cases. I have spoken to farm consultants who, in some cases, are advising farmers not to bother because it is not worth it. The spin has to end.

It is time the Government treated farmers and the people of this country with decency and honesty. All of this is landing at a time inputs continue to rise and factory quotes are falling dramatically. Over the past year, there have been reductions of over €1 per kg of beef and in the past number of weeks, there was about 50 cent of a drop. It is simply not good enough. The scheme is totally inadequate.

Deputy Peadar Tóibín

We are living in a rip-off republic. The Minister of State started the debate with the pretence that the Government is fighting the costs that people are experiencing at the moment. The truth is that right now, the Government is one of the main causes of expensive prices in Ireland right across the system.

Let us consider the ESB, for example. Electricity prices in this country have risen by 57% in the past five years. That is startling. The ESB Group, which is a semi-State operating on the basis of Government policy, made a profit last year of €636 million, at a time people are in trouble in the context of the cost-of-living crisis. One third of a million people are in energy arrears at the moment, and a semi-State is milking the system for that amount. It works out at about €300 per family that the ESB is making in profit. The electricity system is a mess. The wholesale cost of electricity only works out at about 32% of the cost. The transmission and distribution system, which the Government is in charge of, is working at 42% of the cost of the electricity. It is simply not able to do the job it is meant to do.

Carbon taxes amount to €1 billion. They did not exist a couple of years ago and, right now, the Government's objective is to increase them in October and every October until 2030. There were some €4.1 billion in taxes last year. In the jaws of a cost-of-living crisis, the Government made more in fuel taxes than ever before. That is absolutely wrong. The cost of diesel has increased by 60% in the past five years and it is also driving up not just the cost of transport but every single food item on our shelves at the moment as well. The price of shopping has gone up 40% since 2021. A trolley that was costing €150 is now costing €225. That is €3,000 extra per family on groceries per year. Items such as chicken breasts are up from €5 to €12.98. Steak is up from €10 to €19.49. There has been a 35% increase in the price of eggs since 2021. Beef is up 32%. That is really hitting families hard and a lot of this is down to price.

One of the biggest frustrating elements is that at the end of the July, it is the Government's objective to put the price of diesel up 35 cent a litre and the price of petrol up by 22 cent. That is wrong, and I call on the Minister of State at this stage to say openly and in public that he will not increase petrol and diesel prices for families at a time of sheer pressure in terms of the cost of living. It is really important that he gets that right. The cost of living is bearing down hard on families at the moment. They are suffering at a rate I have never seen before.

Some 320,000 families are currently in energy arrears. This is not a luxury good; it is a staple they simply cannot pay for anymore. It is in the gift of the Government to ease the pressure on them by taking the foot off the accelerator on the taxes it is putting on those families at the moment. It is important that the Government reduces the taxes on home heating oil, otherwise families are going to go cold again next winter.

Deputy Michael Collins

Independent Ireland always welcomed any fuel cuts that were made but, in fairness, they never went to the core of the problem. I know, following the protest, the Government was kicking and screaming against giving anything to the people. The people almost had a revolution in the country before it woke up and then when it woke up, it did not go about it in the right way. The right way is always at the pump. If money is taken off at the pump, it goes back into the wallet or purse of the mother or father who is out there working and struggling greatly at this time. However, the Government did not do that; instead it did through the tax system and this, that and the other thing. I met a farmer the other day who said to me that it all he got was three or four cent per litre. That is what it all boiled down to because by the time people have their accountants and others sorted out, they are not going to get anything. That is a terribly unfair way to deal with people. It is a kind of back door system of getting the money back - pushing it out one door and in the other.

This all hurts. It hurts the farmer on the ground. If he does not have some kind of relief, he has to pass that on to the person who is buying the produce in the shop, whether it is eggs, beef, potatoes or vegetables. That is all going to be passed on and people are feeling the hurt of this. The increases in the cost of butter and other foods are extraordinary and people are finding it very hard at this present time. In a crisis, Government is meant to be there to stand with the people. It failed to do that. Independent Ireland did and we got a lot of criticism from the Government. We know why; because we showed the Government up. We stood there on the side of the road. We tried to create peace and bring in an environment where the Government and the protesters could talk. That was refused. We thought we could reconvene the Dáil so if the Government could not talk to the protesters, it could talk to us but it did not want to do that. We tried different mechanisms to put forward solutions and the people appreciated that. They knew there was some voice there. This was a voice for the people who were going out of business who are the men and the women who have built this country.

The one thing that taught me a lesson was that hard-working people who are working day and night said there was no voice for them. Everything is up on their backs and the Government believes, "We will shove it up again". Forget what the Government is doing. We have the Social Democrats and the Labour Party in here telling the Government that it needs to reduce the cost of fuel but they never shut up about carbon tax. Where do they think the money is going to come from? It is the same people. They have no understanding of how people are suffering because if they did, they would ask for a freeze on carbon taxes until the crisis is over and let us have a look at these things after it. They should not come into the Dáil saying, "I should do this", but then shove up the carbon tax anyway because that does not matter, it is a great idea. It is not a great idea. It is an extra infliction on people at a difficult time.

The one little bit of comfort that people have in their own homes is home heating oil. That never really reduced in price. People have been telling me that up until last weekend the heating was still on in their homes because they have no choice. Nobody wants to have it on but the Minister of State knows the weather we have. There are cold, bitter evenings and a lot of people have to turn on the home heating oil. My God, did they get any break? They got no break. These are hard-working people or maybe retired people who have given to the State long enough and they get little or no respect.

Fishermen find themselves in the same situation regarding the rebates for fuel. They have huge fuel issues, whether it is the petrol for the inshore fishermen or the pelagic fleet. They have huge bills to pay and it was not long ago that Europe was willing to give some bit of a rebate to the Irish fishermen but the previous Government would not dare apply for it in case it gave some bit of relief to the people who work hard.

We seem to have a problem in this country. We bleed the man and the woman who works to death and do not support them or try and bring them through a situation where it is a known crisis throughout the world for other governments. There are over 300,000 people in arrears with their electricity bills, and that is a very serious issue. The Government helped them before by giving them a break but it will not even consider that now.

The Government is always on about renewables. Everybody is shouting about them. People want to change; there is no point in saying they should not. They would, of course. It is only a fool that would not. I refer to putting solar panels on their houses but there is only a grant of €1,800 - a measly, dirty little grant when all the rest of Europe is giving €7,000 or €8,000 for putting the same amount of solar panels on their roofs. The Government is way behind the times. It has the National Oil Reserves Agency fuel costs and a budget left that it never spent. The Government is not in the real world and it needs to catch up.

Deputy Richard O'Donoghue

I was in Newcastle West last week at the agricultural show, the Newcastle West Show. One thing resonated with me at the show. A young girl of nine years of age from County Kerry came up to me. She was standing in front of me, her mother was behind her and I think her aunt was with her as well. She turned around to her mother and her mother said, "Ask him yourself". She asked if she could have a picture with me. I was intrigued as to why she wanted the picture. I was intrigued to know why a nine-year-old girl from Kerry recognised me and wanted a picture. I asked her, "Why do you want the picture with me?" Do you know what she said to me at nine years of age? She said: "My mammy takes me to training. My mammy takes me to my matches. My mammy could not take me to two matches because of fuel."

She said I stood with them during the fuel crisis. That is what a nine-year-old from Kerry was saying. Can the Minister of State imagine that? It is not a laughing matter when a nine-year-old is saying it. Independent Ireland had our stall at the show in Newcastle West, and I did not get a minute to myself with people coming up to me thanking me for standing with them, for holding a peaceful process and for understanding where they were. I have said on more than one occasion that the people who were at the protests, who I stood with in Foynes, County Limerick, were people who had never protested before. They were all members of the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael parties, but they said, "Never again," because they believe they have become city-based parties, they have forgotten their roots and the Cabinet no longer reflects the whole country.

These cities or large towns were built by people who came from the county. They built the likes of Dublin. They moved here and integrated. Believe it or not, Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway everywhere all originated from people in the county, coming to build big cities. That is where they came from. Their ancestors are here but when it comes to the next election, they will remember what the Government has done to everyone in this country who could not afford to buy an electric car. People are building new homes and have A-rated houses with heat pumps and solar panels. I commend it, but when the snow hit and they went three weeks without power, they all bought diesel generators because when the infrastructure was down, they had no other way to heat their houses. The problem with heat pumps is a 20 kW generator is needed to run them so all they will do with their generators is run an electric heater and run the power in their houses.

In one sense, having an A-rated house is brilliant, but we are an island. Does the Government not understand it? Things go wrong and power goes out because of a lack of infrastructure. The Government should have allowed at least one fireplace in a house so people could heat themselves if the power goes out. What happened? They all went back to the houses of their parents, uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters that had heat because they could not sustain it in their own household. We talk to young people with young children who could not live in their own modern houses because of power outages. We are talking about how we want people using electric vehicles to protect the environment. It is great if people can afford it, but the average vehicle on the road at the moment is from between 2010 and 2018. That is what people can afford, but what does this Government do? Since that is all they can afford, it taxes them out of existence on fuel. That is what the Government is doing. It is taxing people who cannot afford to buy something electric out of existence. How will they ever get to where the Government wants them to go to?

People have infrastructure in the cities, which I welcome, but outside the cities, there is nothing because of the failure of Government, which put all its eggs in one basket, and now people in Dublin are giving out that their children cannot come home because there is no place for them to live. The Government filled all the cities, trying to make them bigger and bigger, and has forgotten about the generations that have moved out and want to come back home. If infrastructure was put in around the country, people should be able to live and work anywhere in Ireland, but all the Government does is try to cram more people into the one place where it thinks it can try to control them.

If the Government thinks it can give people a giveaway budget with five or six days to go coming up to the election, they will never believe it again. Each year, the Government is dropping in the ratings and, the next time, it will be dropping an awful lot more.

Deputy Carol Nolan

Tá áthas orm deis a fháil labhairt ar an mBille Airgeadais seo atá os ár gcomhair tráthnóna inniu. As an Independent TD for Offaly, I have consistently highlighted the intolerable burden of high energy and fuel costs on families, farmers and hauliers across my constituency. I accept that this Bill seeks to provide some temporary relief in that it increases the diesel rebate scheme cap to €120 per 1,000 litres for qualifying road transport operators, until the middle of this year. It also implements cuts to mineral oil tax rates on petrol, auto diesel and other fuels until July, while postponing further carbon component increases until October but these steps are not enough and they offer modest short-term respite. We need a long-term strategy to protect our businesses and safeguard tens of thousands of jobs, particularly in rural areas, where we have haulage companies and agri-contractors. That is what I am concerned about. These steps represent a wholly inadequate response to a deep and sustained crisis. I stood with agri-contractors, hauliers, and construction workers on the lines in my constituency during the protests. I found it remarkable that there is a lack of acknowledgement of the struggles that businesses face in this country.

What is very concerning is the fact that I have seen businesses going to the wall in my constituency, Offaly, but I have never heard of one NGO going to the wall in this country. We have 34,000 NGOs. Let us face it. They are not known for creating employment. They are certainly not known for creating tens of thousands of jobs in rural counties like Offaly, yet we have a situation where there are 34,000 NGOs and there is massive duplication. We could have the same categories of NGOs over and over again. We paid out €6.2 billion of taxpayers' money last year. I have not heard of any of them going to the wall, but I have heard of agri-contractors and small businesses in my constituency going to the wall. I have heard of job losses. This is shameful.

I ask the Government to reflect on its policy position. When it comes to NGOs or overseas aid, it seems to have shifted too far to the left. They are left-wing policies. It is crazy. The Government has abandoned businesses. All we have to do is look at overseas aid. There are five countries on the watchdog list for human rights abuses. What did the Government do in this year's budget? It decided to pay them €840 million in overseas aid, with taxpayers' money. Some of those countries, incredibly, include Afghanistan, Sudan and North Korea. We have the Irish taxpayer paying overseas aid to North Korea and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, our own businesses go to the wall and 34,000 NGOs get €6.2 billion of taxpayers' money. That is not to mention the sham of the asylum system and the money that is handed out in social welfare payments.

We need to put Irish citizens first. We need to put our own businesses first and there needs to be a proper focus. The Government needs to move back from its left-wing policies because I can see it shifting further and further to the left. All it has to do is look at its position on NGOs and on paying countries with appalling human rights records. It is handing out our taxpayers' money to that sort of thing. It is crazy.

I have stood with many businesses in my constituency. They tell me that they are crippled with diesel costs, VAT costs, tolls, auto-enrolment costs, energy costs, regulatory costs and input costs for farmers. It is crazy. It goes on and on. Rural households continue to face some of Europe's highest energy prices while small peat producers and turf users in the midlands in counties like mine are penalised by policies that ignore basic realities and common sense, yet the Government has nothing to say about that. It has nothing to say to how it states, in the event of an energy crisis, people should not be allowed to cut their turf. They should be allowed to. The Government is bowing down to its EU masters all the time. It seems that its policy is to appease its EU masters, forget the Irish citizens and people in County Offaly who depend on solid fuel. It throws caution to the wind and forgets and ignores those people. I have repeatedly criticised Government's misplaced priorities.

It is directing vast sums of money where it should not be going, on asylum accommodation and on social welfare payments which are far too generous. It is acting as a pull factor, bringing in people we do not want on this island. All we have to do is look at what happened in Belfast. Do we want that down here? No we do not. We do not want that on any part of our island. It is high time the Government got its act together, clamped down on and cut the social welfare payments for people who are not genuine asylum seekers and treat the Irish taxpayer with respect.

Contrary to what a previous Fine Gael Taoiseach said about people getting up early in the morning getting fair play, they are not getting it. People in this country who get up early in the morning are being punished. There is tax upon tax on working people. That is where the Government is hitting them, yet it squanders money and pays into the whole sham of the asylum seeker accommodation. We do not have vetting of the people coming in and we do not have vetting of the cowboys and chancers providing the accommodation either. It is an absolute sham. I will continue to call it out because I think that as Irish citizens we need to stand up. I am listening to what people are saying to me. That is my job as a politician in here. I serve the interests of Ireland only and that is why I am raising it here again today. The Government needs to look at its policies. It has gone too far left altogether. It is just crazy what is going on.

I have constituents at absolute breaking point. I have had people in my office who are very upset. They are working people who are trying to make ends meet and put their children through college but instead of being helped, they are being taxed and punished. We must deliver permanent and meaningful tax reductions on fuel and energy. The USC, which was meant to be a temporary measure, must be abolished. We have to help working people here. Our own interests should always come first.

The Government should suspend punitive carbon charges for rural Ireland. I am glad to say I was one of the 12 who voted against the climate action Bill. I recognised at the time that it was not good and I remain opposed to the carbon tax. We need to support our local fuel and peat producers and place the needs of Irish citizens first.

This Bill is a small concession but it falls very short of the decisive and long-term action that Ireland demands. We need an end to the squandering of Irish taxpayers' money and to the crazy amounts of money going into NGOs. We need to support our businesses and working families in this country.

Deputy Michael Healy-Rae

In regard to the package put in place, I want to thank the Minister, Deputy Heydon, the Ministers of State, Deputies Dooley and Grealish, and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien. I also thank the team who worked to put it together. Of course, I would welcome the package because I worked on it too. Like every package put together, the one thing you would always ask is whether it went far enough. The whole issue of taxation on fuel has to be looked at and that will have to be done ahead of budget 2027. Our tax system cannot rely so heavily on taxation on fuel given that rural people are at a disadvantage because they have to drive further, because of agriculture and contracting and because of trying to survive in rural Ireland. The carbon tax deferral is very welcome but this is a tax that will have to be examined as to its effectiveness because it is punishing people living in rural areas who do not have any alternative to driving. They have to use diesel or petrol because electric vehicles are not as reliable or give the same distance. That is why the whole issue of carbon tax is such a hot potato for people living in rural areas.

Again, I remind people that the package put in place was, if not the largest, the second largest fund put in place in Europe in response to the war being waged many thousands of miles away and which is totally beyond the control of this Government. At the same time, we have to be balanced and considerate in taxing fuel and to understand that an awful lot of people living in rural areas, like County Kerry, are being more directly and negatively impacted by taxes on fuel than others.

On carbon tax funds, the SEAI is being funded by carbon tax but it is ironic that we still have people waiting two years for retrofitting under the warmer homes scheme. Such an amount of money is being collected all the time through taxation to help people retrofit their homes. When a person in their 70s or 80s, who is living in a cold home, says they would like to make their home more energy efficient and to avail of the retrofitting grant - I welcome the retrofitting grant and I am glad it is there - they are told they qualify but they will have to wait so many years. The Minister of State will understand why that is a big worry to a person who might be shoving 80 years of age to be told they will be given the grant but they must wait two years for it. Surely we could do better when it comes to delivering. I know there are issues like manpower on the ground, labour and so on. I understand why there are difficulties delivering it more quickly but it is something we should seriously look at. I hope budget 2027 will look at aspects of that scheme to see if we can get the money to where it is needed more quickly and to bring relief, heat, warmth and comfort to older people more quickly than at present.

On issues like the carbon tax, we have to start looking at exactly how much is being collected and how quickly it is being delivered to help the people we are trying to help. Money is being collected and it is going to TAMS grants, for example. That is something we desperately want funding for. We have to strike a balance for the greater good at all times.

It would be wrong for anyone to talk on the Finance Bill and not recognise the package put in place was such a large and substantial sum of money. On agriculture and the marine, that fund was put in place in a very timely fashion. Yes, administration had to be dealt with but I want to acknowledge the work of the Secretary General, the people in the Department of Finance and the Minister, Deputy Heydon, for chairing all those meetings and being so diligent dealing with the representatives from all the groups, whether it was the contractors, the marine people, the fishers or the farmers, to try to deliver something that would be substantial enough that it would make a difference. That has been implemented now. People have put in their applications and will know what they will get. Any money they get is a help. There is another issue, in that because it is a rebate scheme, they should not have to pay tax on the money they get.

An Ceann Comhairle

I call Deputy Danny Healy-Rae.

Deputy Danny Healy-Rae

Many people are in a desperate state. I appeal to the Minister of State to acknowledge that. While I welcome these energy supports, which are badly needed, a lot more needs to be done. With over 300,000 people in energy arrears, there is no question as to the impact the increase in energy costs is having on people. Something needs to be done about the ever-increasing costs of electricity. Since Bord na Móna closed, the cost of electricity has gone up each and every day.

Electric Ireland is putting prices up by 8% again. Where is it going to stop? Is there any regulator? Many working people are finding it difficult to make ends meet. Those people at home all day on illness payments, disability and pensions need to have a warm home. It is quite cold for this time of the year. Those who are lucky enough to have turf have their fires lighting. Many people cannot afford heating because of the cost of electricity and the cost of the heating oil. Nothing was done for the people who need heating oil. There was nothing done except that the fuel allowance was extended. However, many people are not on fuel allowance and are not entitled to get it. Many farmers and farm contractors are under severe financial pressure to manage day to day costs of fuel and to carry out their work. It is shameful that these reductions in fuel are only temporary.

I am worried. The war is not over. We will go on holidays. The Dáil will close down on 16 July, and we will not be back until around 15 September. I am worried about people in that space of time. Will there be any preparation to extend the relief packages in place? I ask the Government to go back to what I asked on 24 March when it forgot about the people on green diesel and heating oil. When green diesel went up 80 cent, the Government offered 3 cent. When green diesel is at €1 per litre the Government should not be claiming tax on anything above that, whether carbon tax, VAT or anything else and they should charge less for it. It is the same at the pumps. Give it back to the people at the pumps. The Government should take the taxes it was getting until the emergency happened and give back the rest of it to the people entitled to get it.

The carbon tax increase has been postponed, but what will happen in October? Will they carry on with it? When diesel and petrol were approximately €1.20 per litre and the Government was trying to discourage people from using both we saw that people cannot manage without it. They cannot afford electric cars. They will not go far enough. When it was €1.20 per litre carbon tax was put up. Surely there is no case to be made when it goes up to €1.80 per litre that they should get carbon tax then as well. That is wrong.

Many people have not qualified for these packages. I remind the Minister of State of that. Many people are not entitled to the rebate system in place. Packages should last until at least the end of September when we are back here to make sure people can live in between. I saw people protesting on the bypass in Killarney and I was hurt at that time because I saw friends there who would not talk to me. That was the worst part of it all. Maybe the Government thinks those people have forgotten what caused that. I can remind them there was a 94-year-old woman with a flag on the bypass in Killarney. Why was she out? Why were the nurses giving out? Why were the teachers giving out? Why were they all protesting? It was not just farmers and contractors. Many people were feeling the pinch and felt they could not pay the people who mind their children when they go to work and pay for the fuel to go to work and pay for everything else. I ask the Government not to leave those people behind if things are still as bad on 31 July, because that will not be long coming.

I am also very concerned about the value taxpayers are getting when we see the pressure they are under every day with the taxes they are paying. We then see that we have no bother in the world giving €40 million to Ukraine in the middle of the crisis. That is on top of all the other money it was given. We borrowed approximately €1.9 billion for a loan for Ukraine. We did not cause the war at all. No Irish person had anything to do with it. Does the Government think it is fair to load the people of Ireland with that kind of bill on top of the €125 million they gave Mr. Zelenskyy when he was here? They gave it to him in his back pocket when he was going home. There is a place called stop. See after your own people first and think of your own people, because they will think of you when you come to the door and will remember what the Government put them through in March and April. They will not forget. It is time to cop on. Do not leave the people behind at the end of July without ensuring they have packages going forward.

An Ceann Comhairle

Time is up, Deputy.

Deputy John McGuinness

With the Ceann Comhairle's permission, I am sharing time with our new Deputy Kyne.

An Ceann Comhairle

Is that eight minutes and four minutes?

Deputy John McGuinness

Yes. I congratulate the Deputy on his success.

I join in some of the comments made about the carbon tax and I ask the Minister of State if he thinks we are getting value for money from it. Does he think it should be tailored to ensure there are not the types of increases faced through the carbon tax, and to divvy up the money raised from a lower amount of taxation? One of the issues that has come to the fore from the fuel protest and so on, is that enormous taxes are being taken from fuel throughout the country by the Government. It has reached the point of being absolutely unacceptable. I agree with the suggestion that relief should be given at the pumps. Everyone would have benefitted from that, and it would be an easy scheme to administer. The individuals who go to work and are hard-pressed would benefit from it. While the diesel rebate scheme and others put in place on the agri side are welcome, we cannot forget the people we represent. I refer particularly to pensioners and those on low pay who are feeling the squeeze because of the cost-of-living crisis. We have to ensure there is some benefit for those people in whatever action we take.

I think all who have spoken in this debate have mentioned that we know someone who cannot buy home heating oil. We know people who have cut back on their grocery bills. They cannot afford some of the prices being charged in supermarkets and shops. There is a need to examine the costs in all of these supermarkets and at the petrol pump to ensure there is not price gouging going on. Insurance costs have gone up. Commercial rates have gone up. Planning charges have gone up and the small to medium size businesses are being crucified once again. This is the sector we say employs up to 1 million people. These are the homegrown people who base their business on a family input and are the people we rely on. We seem to have abandoned that whole sector and walked away from it. The cost of fuel at the pumps needs to be addressed. The cost of home heating oil has to be addressed. The USC and tax bands need to be addressed. The USC was supposed to be temporary. I remember the late Brian Lenihan telling us all of that in this House. That is not the case. We need to reform the tax bands for workers to ensure they take home more to meet the various costs they are challenged by in their own homes. However, when the costs are added together and you move from the home to the SME sector you are destroying the local economy that keeps the shops open in villages and towns all over the country and in the high streets of Ireland. There is not enough said about these costs in this House. There is not enough action taken outside of this debate to ensure the businesses that are threatened and being challenged by current costs are kept open. We are not doing enough for them. We speak enough about them and praise them enough, yet when it comes to action I am afraid we fall far short of what is required.

One of the areas I am concerned about is the work of Comptroller and Auditor General and the costs that are spiralling for the children's hospital and in almost every project you can think of, without being challenged in a robust way by any of the committees of this House.

It is not that they do not want to do it. I am sure they would like to do it but, unfortunately, we are told their hands are tied, although that is not the case. We in this House have a job to do. We must work to ensure that every Secretary General and civil servant is made accountable to this House. We need reform to ensure that where we do not get value for money, where there are inefficiencies in the system and where public money is obviously being wasted, following scrutiny and due process, action is taken with regard to those who were central to the loss of funds to the Government or to the inefficiencies I have outlined.

I remember going to a state in Africa as Chairman of the public accounts committee to look for €4 million that had to be accounted for. When we visited the schools supported by money from the Irish Government, the children and the teachers were counting the pencils and the jotters, as they called them, to account for the money they spent, but the comptroller and auditor general in that country was driving a very big Mercedes and was subject to very little obvious accountability. We need to examine all of that. We need to empower our own Committee of Public Accounts and Comptroller and Auditor General to ensure we get real value for money. It is not happening.

I am beginning to receive huge complaints from people who are now more in tune with what is going on, or not going on, in Government. They see this waste and are appalled by it. It is a national disgrace that this is allowed to continue but successive governments have failed to introduce any real radical reform, or structural reform, to address these issues. Can the Minister of State imagine how much money we would have at budget time if we had a more efficient and accountable system, one that did not lose as much as the current system does? I know that it is a risk. I know decisions are risky. However, factoring all of that into how the State is managed, we see the same results: poor value for money and not enough attention being given to developing the Civil Service to a point where it is at the top of its game in relation to all of this.

I ask the Minister of State to reflect on what has been said and to factor in the fact that it has been said more than once. He has heard all of this from me more than once. I ask him to do something about it within Government and within our own party because, as far as I can see, no one is listening.

Deputy Seán Kyne

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for sharing his time with me. As this is my first opportunity to give a speech, I will thank all members of the public in Galway West who voted for me and gave me the distinct honour of coming back to this House for a second chance to represent the people of Galway West. I thank everybody who voted for me in that election, whether they gave me their number one or a transfer. I acknowledge all of the other candidates who stood in the by-election. It was a clean and competitive election. I thank the director of elections, the Minister, Deputy Peter Burke; our party leader, Deputy Simon Harris; all of my colleagues in the parliamentary party, particularly Seanad colleagues; MEPs; city and county councillors in Galway; others who came to assist; and party members. As I said, it is a distinct honour to have been successful in that by-election. I will not take it for granted.

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Troy. I acknowledge this Bill, the necessity for it and the reason behind it, which is the conflict in the Middle East and the resulting increases in fuel costs at our petrol pumps around the country. I also acknowledge the very valid cost-of-living concerns this has caused for members of the public. I welcome the postponement of the carbon tax increase until budget day. We will have a look at it at that stage. As I said in many of the election debates, we do not know what the world will be like in October. None of us has a crystal ball. We do not know how much longer this conflict will continue. It is important that we are in a position to review matters as things develop and to have the foresight to look to the future. We have to acknowledge that because of the management of the economy and the hard work of people across the country we have reserves for the forthcoming budget.

When talking about the carbon tax, it is important to note the moneys that derive from that tax go into very important areas of our economy, including ACRES for farmers, fuel allowance for those in need and home retrofit schemes. While no tax is popular, it is important to acknowledge where carbon tax revenues go, although we also need to keep these things under review in the future.

I will talk about another area I talked about during the campaign - home heating oil. Home heating oil is obviously not subject to excise duty but it still represents a significant cost. We have seen a significant increase for those who are reliant on home heating oil or kerosene across our country. We are closer to the next budget than we are to the last and it is important in that budget we ensure that if this conflict is still with us and if prices are still high, there is some rebate or other mechanism to assist those who are reliant on home heating oil or kerosene. It is absolutely vital that they are looked after. Again, this is not something new that I am saying. I have been saying this over the last number of weeks. We have seen home heating oil prices effectively double over the course of a number of weeks during this conflict.

I also acknowledge the substantial package the Government put in place both because it was done and because it was needed. It was absolutely vital to provide that support to those across the country who were impacted by the rise in prices at our petrol pumps arising from the conflict in the Middle East. It was important for Government to respond. As I said, it did so because it was necessary and because it had the resources to do so thanks to the management of the economy.

An Ceann Comhairle

I congratulate the Deputy. I was not aware it was his first speech here since being elected.

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Deputy Robert Troy)

I thank all the Deputies for their contributions today. I join in the congratulations to my colleague. It is a great honour to be elected at any stage but he will be particularly pleased to be re-elected during a by-election. I offer him my best wishes for the remainder of this term.

Neither I nor anyone in Government are patting themselves on the back. We are acknowledging and outlining the measures we have introduced in response to a global issue. The one thing we can all agree on is the need to continually monitor our response to these international high energy costs. At the very beginning, when the first set of schemes, savings or supports were introduced, we said this would be kept under constant review and that we would revisit it, if needed. We did that. It is also right and proper to say that it is not possible to offset all of the recent market-driven fuel price increases using the tax system. Some in the Opposition will say that although not all will. It is fair to say that these measures, together with the non-tax supports introduced by Government, will provide significant mitigation, supporting those who are experiencing the most acute impact of the increases in fuel prices. The total estimated cost of the support packages the Government has introduced is over €750 million, making Ireland's support package one of the largest in Europe on a per capita basis.

I will say something to the Members opposite. I recently travelled to Belfast and had a very productive meeting with the their party colleague, the Minister, John O'Dowd. He too acknowledges the real challenges in trying to protect every single person. He would not claim to be able to do it either.

I will say that what we primarily spoke about was financial literacy, credit unions, the promotion of financial services and how we can work together but he was fair in his acknowledgement of the challenges that all governments have. Each of us across the various political parties, whether talking to sister parties in Europe, or when we travel as part of our membership of the multilateral fora, knows that every single government throughout the globe is facing huge challenges in bringing in supports. It is not possible, despite how it is portrayed, to absolve and mitigate all of the effects of the energy increases.

Deputy Doherty raised concerns with regard to the diesel rebate scheme and cash flow issues for recipients. The Government is cognisant of the current difficulties being faced by licensed operators. I would highlight that the diesel rebate scheme will provide much-needed cash flow to the sector. I can confirm that Revenue has reviewed its internal processes and identified several IT solutions, which are to be implemented to issue refunds faster to compliant taxpayers.

The Deputy was also critical of the fact that reductions applied to diesel and petrol were also applied to aviation fuels. As the Deputy will be aware, because, to be fair, he is competent in his job, the taxation of energy products in Ireland is governed by the EU energy tax directive. This directive prescribes the minimum rates for fuels and fuel uses. The directive prescribes that in addition to adhering to minimum rates, the excise duty rate on particular fuel types used for propellant purposes must be consistent across all propellant uses for that fuel. This means that the same mineral oil tax rate must apply to heavy oil, whether it is used as a propellant in motor vehicles, aircraft or waterborne vehicles. Ireland has no discretion in this regard, and we are simply adhering to EU law, as we must. Of course, the facts do not support the Deputy’s narrative. He is portraying a different issue as if we made a conscious decision to not exclude private jet fuel. That is not factual. It cannot be done, and the Deputy knows it, but he wants to portray his narrative, and he wants to be able to stick it up on Facebook later this evening. That is the point.

Deputy Pearse Doherty

The Government went beyond the directive. Maybe the Minister of State does not know it.

Deputy Robert Troy

Deputy Doherty also called for the carbon tax to be further reduced for kerosene, as well as for further reductions in the mineral oil tax for other fuels. The Government has deferred the planned increase in carbon tax scheduled for 1 May until October. This will impact green diesel and non-propellant fuels such as kerosene, heating oil, natural gas and solid fuels.

A number of speakers made the point that they are aware of old age pensioners who were going cold because they simply had no money for fuel. That should not be happening anywhere in any constituency. We are all constituency operators. We are all acutely aware of the exceptional needs payment that is available to people. When a Deputy gets up to say he was aware of three old-age pensioners, I would be asking why he did not assist those people to go to the community welfare officer and ensure they could get-----

Deputy Pearse Doherty

How does the Minister of State know he did not?

Deputy Robert Troy

He did not claim that he did.

Deputy Pearse Doherty

He was cleaning up your mess.

Deputy Robert Troy

With regard to the carbon tax, some speakers referred to no concrete measures being taken to reduce the long-term cost of energy for people. The deep retrofitting of houses is making sure that people who are in receipt of fuel allowance, who are more likely to be susceptible to fuel poverty, have lower energy costs in the longer term. In 2025, €469 million was spent on the retrofitting of homes. They are permanent measures. I see it first hand in my constituency, and I am sure others see it also. Some €140 million was spent on energy efficiency and €99 million on the fuel allowance. The fuel allowance was increased in the most recent measures and in the previous budget. The income eligibility criteria were increased, and people on the working family payment can now avail of this. Some 470,000 people are availing of these additional measures that are targeted at those who most need support due to fuel poverty.

A number of Deputies, including Deputies Devlin, McGuinness, Brabazon and Kyne, made the point that the upcoming budget needs to ensure that workers are protected and supported. There should be a package of measures that rewards people who get up every day to go out to work, so they can feel the benefits of doing so. I would be very confident that that will happen in this budget.

Deputy Nash made the point that the generation of resources and how we redistribute resources are very important. He is right. Budget 2026 was about protecting jobs. The Deputy is critical of the VAT reduction, which was supported by many in the Opposition. Perhaps it would have been better if it were targeted more at smaller microenterprises. That said, there are 190,000 people working in the hospitality industry, and 75% of those are in businesses with fewer than ten people. It is about protecting jobs. We invested in services, and the largest ever investment in the most recent budget was for the provision of housing. The first home scheme and the shared equity scheme are supporting people into home ownership, which is something we can all agree on.

Deputy Michael Healy-Rae is right about the SEAI grants. We should be doing more. Anyone who applies for the grants only to be told there is an 18- to 24-month waiting list is bitterly disappointed. They see the benefits in their friend’s house, and they want that. However, they want it faster, and we need to work towards that.

With regard to the overseas aid budget, Deputy Nolan suggested that if we did not give anything to overseas aid, we would have no challenge in society in Ireland today. While I would like to spend more, I am proud that as a developed country, we spend 0.56% of our gross national income on humanitarian supports for malnourished women and children across the globe, helping to build communities in the developing world. I think that is a good thing to do. To try to sow division by saying that if we did not do that, we would be able to answer all our problems, is distasteful and wrong.

Question put and agreed to.

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht - Tuesday, 9 Jun 2026

Finance Bill 2026: Second Stage

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 9 Jun 2026