Tax Data
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-24
============================================================

Louis O'Hara (SF), Galway East

The whole argument the Government uses to justify the increases in this tax is that the increasing receipts are spent on climate initiatives. The Minister can say that it is ring-fenced, but this report has said that the reality is that 40% of the revenue is not being directed toward the intended measures. I outlined to the Minister the pressures that carbon tax increases are placing on households and that people do not have the alternatives. I do not know how the Minister can justify further increases when he is not actually spending the money on the measures that the Government should be funding. In fact, many of his Government colleagues from the regional Independents, when they were in opposition, spoke very strongly against carbon tax increases and the impact they would have on rural Ireland but obviously, ministerial jobs have changed their mind. Taxpayers need to have confidence in how a Government is spending their money. It should be spent in a way that has been promised by the Government. This report states that it is not. Most of all, the Government needs to stop fleecing ordinary households, who are up to their eyes with rising costs. Many households are in arrears on the likes of their energy bills and so on and this is just adding to that again. The Minister needs to recognise that as well.

---

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/2026-02-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:40+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-24