Finance Bill 2026: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-02 ============================================================ Joanne Collins (SF), Agricultural Panel I genuinely fear that we are facing into a winter of discontent due to the increase and the plans this Government has put forward. The decision to restore fuel excise duty increases from September onwards may be insignificant around the Cabinet table, but it is very significant in the parts of the country I represent and for the people I represent, the workers commuting every day, the parents dropping their children to school, families travelling to hospital appointments or just in general for people living in rural Ireland who simply have no alternative but to use their cars. The period from September through to Christmas can be one of the most expensive times in households, especially for parents with children going back to school and having to buy school uniforms. It is also a time of colder weather, longer nights, higher electricity bills and a need for more heating oil in households. Home heating oil has never seen a cut. We also have the secondary school voluntary payments, which are anything but voluntary. Barnardos has repeatedly highlighted the enormous burden of back-to-school costs. It reckons that it costs €1,700 for a primary school student each year and up to €3,000 for a secondary school student. This imposes huge costs on families coming into this time of year. There was another blow yesterday, with the introduction of the €3 charge on every parcel coming in from outside the EU. This disproportionately affects people in this country given the trade agreement we have with Britain. People trying to save a little bit by ordering online will have €3 added to every parcel. This is going to place a huge burden on families and households. Families are being squeezed in every direction, and the response we are getting from the Government is to increase the cost of filling a car. It is just not on. Families cannot afford it. The Government had choices. It could have protected ordinary people and looked elsewhere for this revenue. It could have tackled the sweetheart tax arrangements it has with the banks, under which they get to continue offsetting their losses from the financial crash against the enormous profits they are making today. Instead, once again, it is the easy option of making the working people pay for it. The Government likes to boast about the €750 million package of supports announced after the protests. Do not get me wrong - the haulage sector, contractors and farming sector needed these supports, but the everyday person needed them too. I have met so many people I stood with in Foynes during the week of protests. They have told me they stood there for a week and then walked away completely deflated because their bosses got a rebate. They still have to drive to work at the yards to get into their trucks. Their wives, partners and children are still driving. They are driving to college and to take the kids to school. They did not get a rebate. That should have been taken off at the pump. The haulage sector is still giving out that it is three months down the line and it is still waiting for its rebates. Deputy Pearse Doherty has raised plenty of times in the Dáil that there are sectors not getting this support on time. If this had been done at the pumps, it would have been instant and would have benefited every single person as well as the haulage sector. No supports were provided for the healthcare assistants driving to work every day and none for the carers who have to drive between appointments. There were no supports for any ordinary families in this State. They were forgotten about. A direct reduction in costs at the pump would have delivered immediate help for all sectors. We have also seen a lot of misinformation and lies over the last couple of months about carbon taxes. What is crucial here is that people understand the facts, and the fact is that carbon taxes are an ever-increasing tax on essentials. You cannot tax people into using public transport when it does not exist, and it does not exist. It might exist in Dublin, but I guarantee that when you go outside the M50, it does not exist to work for people who need it. You cannot tax people into buying electric vehicles that they cannot afford. You cannot tax people into heating their homes with different forms of heat when there is no realistic alternative. That is not climate action. That is simply making life harder for those already struggling. These policies do not reduce emissions. What they do is to increase deprivation. They force families to keep the heating off. They force older people to sit in cold houses or to heat one room at a time and use that room day and night. They force parents to choose between filling an oil tank and paying other essential bills. A Government's priorities are revealed by the choices it makes. This Government has chosen to protect the banks while making families pay more. It has chosen complicated schemes instead of straightforward supports and headlines over help. The people paying the price are ordinary workers, families and rural communities, who deserve so much better. For many people in Dublin, a car is a choice. Where I am from and for the people I represent, it is not a choice but a necessity. We do not have public transport. We do not have trains or a Luas. We barely have taxis. This affects every single person in County Limerick when they put fuel in their car. I do not care if the Government is going to do this bit by bit. At the end of it, we are still going to be up at high costs. I hear the price of a barrel of oil has come down, but we do not see it here. Costs are the same as they were when excise duty was taken off and just before the war in Iran. If the Government puts the cost of fuel back up, we are not going to see a reduction if the price of a barrel of oil comes down. When the cost of a barrel of oil goes up, the price of fuel in this country goes up within an hour. When the cost of a barrel of oil goes down, it takes months for the price of fuel to come down. --- 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/seanad/2026-07-02/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:09+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-02