National Oil Reserve Agency (Amendment) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-25
============================================================

Eoin Hayes (SD), Dublin Bay South

Yes, and then 80% of it goes to the Climate Action Fund. The entirety of the Climate Action Fund, or 99% of it, is funded by this levy so the Minister cannot tell me he is being transparent. The Minister cannot tell me that he was totally upfront with the Dáil here; he was not. The Minister did not mention it in his opening remarks. It is not in the Bill. It is not in the explanatory memorandum from the Department. It is important that the Minister be upfront with people on this, that the levy is, in fact, the only major funder of the Climate Action Fund in the State and that, without it, we will strip €10 million a year from schools for solar panels. That is what we are talking about here.
The Minister is correct that the levy is approximately €10 million a month. It goes up and down, as the Minister said. It was approximately €120 million, as it was, in 2024 and it is forecast in the explanatory memorandum as being approximately the same for this year. That is a very significant chunk of money over a very long period of time.
What we are saying is that it is fair enough to give relief for two months, as it is in excise and as it is in haulage, but to say that the Minister should have the power to extend it by another €180 million and strip the Climate Action Fund of all its funding for this year and next is an insane proposition. The proviso that allows the Minister to do that in this Bill, which, by the way, does not mention the Climate Action Fund and is not transparent on that, should stand, and so I will be pressing 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