Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-05
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Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow

Real incomes are rising. The Social Democrats often call for targeted supports. I listened to their proposals. They are not in favour of energy credits for all different people. The Opposition has many different views. The Social Democrats call for targeted supports. Next week, we will bring in a targeted support in which 50,000 households will benefit from a fuel allowance payment for the first time. It will be backdated to 1 January. These are working families in receipt of the working family payment. They will receive up to €380 in one lump sum. We are continuing to work on this intensively.
The priority this week has been trying to get people safely home from a dangerous region. We are also working to try to map out the potential economic impact of this. While I do not want to make a direct comparison with Ukraine because prices and inflation rates are not in that space, let us just take it as a comparison of when we last saw a major conflict break out. What did we do? We worked together at European level. We worked with other European countries. It was not about one Department doing something here or one country doing something there. The Deputy will remember that, by Europe working together, it brought us to the point of the windfall tax legislation. On Monday, I will meet with fellow European finance ministers to analyse the impact in terms of energy affordability and supply. The Taoiseach will attend a European Council meeting where this will be an agenda item as well.
As he said yesterday, and as I say today, we will keep this under review and we do not rule out actions that may be needed to assist people or the economy. What we cannot do, five or six days into a conflict, is try to predict where this will bring us economically in the time ahead because it depends on the length and depth of the conflict. We have got to make sure that any response is the correct one in helping to secure our economy.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-05/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:44+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-05