National Oil Reserves Agency (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-03-25 ============================================================ Eoin Hayes (SD), Dublin Bay South It is not, but it is a very significant provision that the Government has put into it. Let me take Deputies through how I came across it. The Government has deliberately obfuscated this from the Dáil and it is a very serious matter for Government backbenchers, in particular. On the face of it, the change to the Order of Business to add to the agenda an amendment to the National Oil Reserves Agency Act 2007 does not seem like a big deal. Any reasonable person recognises the fallout of the illegal war initiated by the United States and Israel against Iran and its people would have consequences in Ireland. It is far-reaching. Therefore, maybe we needed to do something with the national oil reserves, but when I read the amendment proposed within the past 24 hours and put on the agenda this morning, it did not refer to releasing oil reserves. That power is already granted by the 2007 Act. It did not talk about increasing supply to provide relief to hard-pressed families. No, it had something about pausing a levy of 2 cent per litre. Again, that does not seem like a big deal given excise went down by 17 cent per litre last night, which we in the Social Democrats supported. I dug a little deeper. That 2 cent is the total funding for the National Oil Reserves Agency, coming to about €120 million in income for the agency in 2024, according to its financial statements. The Bill proposes in the first instance to effectively get rid of that levy for the next few months, which is reasonable - laudable, even. We are in an energy crisis, after all. But then there is this other measure in the Bill, section 1(b). This provision says the Minister can suspend the levy after those two months for a while if he wants. Maybe that is reasonable. The question is for how long, how much it costs and what effect it has. The amendment says he can suspend it to December 2027, a potential 18-month additional suspension of the levy. That is strange. We did not do that for the excise taxes or hauliers last night. It is quite an odd thing to do. What is also odd is that the Minister can do it at his sole discretion. That is interesting. Ministers can do things at their sole discretion all the time through statutory instruments but it is strange to create a brand new statutory instrument within 24 hours, so it made me a little more suspicious. The Minister will have to forgive me. I decided to look at the finances. It turns out the run rate for the levy is about €10 million per month. Two months would cost €20 million, which means 18 more months would cost a whopping €180 million. A potential €200 million reduction in the public finances is worrying. With this Bill, the Dáil is being asked, in effect, to pre-approve a tax cut of up to €200 million at the sole discretion of one Minister. It is very strange. Last night, the Dáil sat until 11 p.m. to authorise a package of €250 million. Today, it seems the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, can just change the fiscal position of the strategic oil reserves by €200 million with the flick of a pen and with no oversight by the Dáil, no authorisation from the Cabinet and absolutely no one else involved. Not even the Minister for Finance can bring in a tax cut without the Taoiseach authorising it. A €200 million tax cut is a very big deal. It has consequences for the fiscal and financial position of the State. According to its financial statements, the National Oil Reserves Agency collected €120 million in 2024. It did something with that money. Can the Minister tell me what it was? I will yield 30 seconds of my time under Standing Order 61 if the Minister can answer that question. --- 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/2026-03-25/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:47+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-25