Energy Prices
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-26
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Cathy Bennett (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

As I said earlier this week, people understand that the Government is not responsible for the international energy crisis that has emerged. What people hold the Government responsible for in the first instance is the framework it had in place in advance of the crisis. In the second instance, they hold it responsible for its response. I contend that said response has been delayed, minimal and not of sufficient substance to meaningfully protect, as best we can, the people in our communities who need support.
Ordinary families, workers, businesses and farmers have been struggling with out-of-control energy prices. More than 320,000 households are in arrears with their electricity bills. One in four households are in arrears with gas bills. When the Government withdrew the energy credit supports as part of budget 2026, it justified its action on the basis of a projected inflation rate. That rate has proven to be 50% lower than projected. The decision it made was based on fundamentally wrong information. As a result, I contend that the Government made a clearly and undeniably the fundamentally wrong decision. Does the Minister of State dispute that inflation projections were wrong and that the Government’s decision to withdraw energy credits was fundamentally flawed? If so, what is the Government going to do to redress the terrible impact of its clearly ham-fisted decision?
I would appreciate it if the Minister of State could give an explanation as to why nothing seems to have been done more than 400 days after the Government gave a commitment to divert surplus renewable energy to households living in energy poverty. In that period, the Government has allowed surplus renewable energy valued at €560 million, or €1.3 million, to go to waste every day. This is equivalent to 512 million tanks of hot water that could have been used by households.
The Government has been very prone to saying that it would welcome constructive ideas from the Opposition. My party colleague Deputy Pa Daly, Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on climate, introduced legislation to enhance the power of the energy regulator to hold energy companies to account and to tackle price gouging. Will the Government commit to supporting that legislation? Sinn Féin has brought forward proposals to ensure that data centres pay their fair share through a restructuring of the PSO levy. Is the Government content that households pay six to eight times more than data centres? If the Government is not content with it, will it agree to support the Sinn Féin proposal? I ask this because, to date, it seems that the Government’s policy on energy is predicated on supporting data centres at all costs while ensuring that any measures to support ordinary families are minimal and as temporary in nature as it thinks it can get away with.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:47+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-26