Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-05
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Cian O'Callaghan (SD), Dublin Bay North

Tá díomá mór orm le freagra an Tánaiste. Tá níos mó agus níos mó daoine nach féidir a gcuid billí a íoc. A total of 320,000 homes are in electricity arrears before these prices increased in the past few days. That is the scale of the problem we are facing in the country. What the Government is doing is not addressing that. With regard to the fines being issued and the CCPC, when was the last time it issued a significant fine to a large company? It has issued small fines to small companies and retailers around price information, but when has it issued fines in the millions of euro for this kind of price-gouging that is going on? When has it taken that kind of action?
People are faced now with a serious issue as to how they will heat their homes and where they will get the money to do so. The Tánaiste saying that the Government will monitor the situation and keep it under review is of no use to them. They need the Government to act now. Will it take action for people who cannot heat their homes because of the electricity arrears they are already in and these huge increases in the past few days?

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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/2026-03-05/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:44+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-05