National Oil Reserve Agency (Amendment) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages Dail Éireann — 2026-03-25 ============================================================ Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East Gabhaim buíochas leis na Teachtaí as ucht an leasaithe. Labhróidh mé i gcomhthéacs an leasaithe anois. Ní féidir liom glacadh leis. Ní aontaím leis na rudaí a dúirt na Teachtaí. I do not agree with what Deputy Hayes said. I understand it and will take it at face value that his concerns are genuine. I have no reason to think otherwise. There is nothing underhand about this at all. It is a bit of a stretch. Deputy Hayes spoke about a raid of the Climate Action Fund. That is not it at all. This is a short-term temporary measure to reduce costs to households and businesses. It is on a two-month basis. It is very clearly set out. If it was underhand, it would not be printed in the legislation. It is not a very long Bill. It is not that it was hidden anywhere. One can read it very clearly in about three minutes. Homework is not three minutes but fair play for picking up something that is very clearly set down in the Bill itself so I commend the Deputy for that I have no intention of extending this for 18 months. There is a sunset clause within it so it means within that period of time. If the situation got worse and we had to extend it, it gives the ability in this to extend it but that decision would be a decision that I would bring to Cabinet. I can assure the Deputy that Members would be informed of that. The Climate Action Fund is in surplus to the tune of €265 million that is unallocated. We are continuing and accelerating measures around retrofitting and biodiversity restoration. The Deputy mentioned bogland restoration. A total of 33,000 ha have been restored over the last period of time. Some incredible work is happening there. There has been incredible work on the community side on climate action so I am not trying to in any way cut into that. I have responsibilities as environment Minister to ensure that we do that. I will not be accepting the Deputy's amendment. That is not the intention of what is here. The Deputy read it in a different way. That is fine. That is his wont. That is not what we are going to do. This is a measure to affray increases in costs that people are suffering because of an international situation. NORA itself is in surplus and needs to retain a surplus as well. The cost of this over the two-month period is approximately €20 million - probably less because the NORA levy receipts vary month by month. The clause is a sunset clause. This dies off after that period of time. It does not give a Minister the ability to extend but I can assure the House that I will bring any extension to this to Cabinet and that decision will be made by Cabinet. It is not something we would do lightly. It does not in any way impinge on the climate action worker funding we are providing for groups right across the country. I could go into all this but it is more for an environmental debate. We have done over 2,000 schools, 240,000-plus homes have been retrofitted and 4,000 businesses last year alone. We are targeting 73,000 homes this year. We have amended the grants. The Deputy's concerns are obviously genuine. I am telling him that this is not the intention of it and as we do with everything, we will do that in a transparent way. If we were to extend it, that would be a matter I would bring back to Cabinet and we will inform the House in that way. I will not be accepting the amendment. --- 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