Energy Policy
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-16
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Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East

This is not a cancellation of an increase; it is a deferral. The cost is approximately €22 million in paused tax receipts. To put that in context, the overall investment from 2019 to now is over €2 billion. Our budget for this year, I assure the Deputy, is unaffected. We have also changed the retrofitting grants for households and seen a significant uptick in applications there. We want to bring forward a retrofit passport to make it more accessible, particularly to middle-income earners. We are seeing a significant increase in applications for heat pumps because we upped that grant to €12,500 - the cavity wall grants as well.
We had a good debate on solar yesterday. The Social Democrats brought forward some ideas around that. I want to accelerate solar further. We did 33,000 solar installations last year and can do more this year. We want to target those who are at energy security risk or energy poverty risk. We will protect the carbon tax because it is a clear mechanism for us to be able to protect households and businesses into the future.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-16