Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-10
============================================================

Mary Lou McDonald (SF), Dublin Central

The Taoiseach’s view is simply wrong. It is neither intelligent nor targeted. As a matter of fact, it strikes me as most unintelligent because 70,000 more households than last year are now in difficulties. They cannot pay their bills. I told the Taoiseach we have hit a record of 303,465 such households. They are not millionaires. They are working households who now cannot pay their bills. I want a long-term solution. The long-term solution is to end the price gouging, end the rip-off by the big energy companies and to give the regulator the powers it needs, but the Taoiseach knows that because I have told him that repeatedly. I will tell him this much: in the here and now I want those households to be able to make their bills. The only way in the short term, in the immediacy of now, that they can do that is by the Taoiseach reinstating the energy credit. That is the reality.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:36+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-10