Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-05-06 ============================================================ Ivana Bacik (LAB), Dublin Bay South Rising costs are blowing a €2,000 hole in average household budgets this year. That is in today's Irish Independent . The cost of food, health insurance and energy are all soaring. Ireland has the highest household electricity prices in the EU, as Eurostat has confirmed. The Government's words of sympathy for struggling families are meaningless because it is failing to take action to cut energy costs. It is hunting with the hounds and running with the hare and the hare has got its brains too, it seems. We saw a hare-brained notion from Deputy James O'Connor that nuclear power somehow represents a solution to the crushing cost of energy here but as the Deputy has not acknowledged, in countries with a planning system that actually works, nuclear still takes 15 years to come on stream at a minimum. The stakes for hard-pressed households and PAYE workers are just too high for this sort of public brainstorming exercise form Fianna Fáil TDs. We in the Labour Party welcome national conversations about energy security but not at the expense of actual delivery. Let us look at delivery. In Ireland, we are still at best four years away from delivering any offshore wind energy. That delay is due to lack of Government ambition and government focus. It is deeply regrettable because unlike nuclear, wind power offers feasible, scalable projects. Other countries have led the way on renewables. Let us take Spain, a European leader. More than half of Spanish electricity is generated from renewables. Its government, a labour government, saw which way the proverbial wind was blowing four years ago when Russia mounted its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Spain rapidly ramped up renewable energy capacity, achieving 75% low-carbon electricity generation last year. Solar and wind power are significantly lowering energy bills in Spain. Why are we not doing the same? Our climate boasts plenty of wind but without turbines it is going to waste. As a result, people here are wasting hard-earned money filling the coffers of oil and gas giants. Households here pay €500 more per year for electricity than the EU average. Why does the Government not focus on rapid delivery of renewables? Instead of delivery, it seems that Fianna Fáil are the Don Quixote of Irish politics; it is frightened of windmills. What else can explain the delay? There is so much more we could do. It is not just wind energy; there is also plug-in solar and enhanced battery capacity. Renewables can drastically reduce household bills. We need them to cut emissions and meet climate goals too. The Government is failing to insulate people from the cost of energy now and failing to ensure the future of our younger generations. Its go-to solution for energy shocks is subsidies for fossil fuels and energy companies are reaping windfall gains. Where is the windfall tax that could fund targeted energy credits, as Labour has sough,t and where is the climate action plan for 2026? It was due in January and still has not appeared. When will we see the Government take action on renewables to cut costs for struggling households? --- 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/2026-05-06/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:54+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-06