Electricity Regulation (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-12
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Ken O'Flynn (II), Cork North-Central

-----and he will have his opportunity to do so. Fine.
The reality is that there are people in this country who have never been worse off. The Government goes out and says every day of the week that it is doing fantastic and asks people to give it a clap on the back because it has this deficit and that deficit.
You cannot eat a deficit. There are people now choosing between turning on their heating and eating and the Government is not listening to them. More than 300,000 people in this country are in arrears with their ESB and gas bills. There is something wrong with that. There is something fundamentally wrong when people are in significant arrears in a First World country. The Government does not seem to be listening and does not seem to understand. I do not know if Government Members are knocking on the same doors as we are in Galway and Dublin but, at the doors we are knocking on, people are telling us straight out that they cannot take any more, that they are sick to death of it, that this is the final cut and that they cannot keep on going. I appeal to the Minister of State and to his Government. My colleague has just spoken about the renewable energy schemes that are available, which the Government continuously says are fantastic and marvellous. The truth is that you would want a ball of money under the bed to avail of these schemes. Some of these measures cost €16,000 but you only get €2,000 back. It is ridiculous. It does not make sense.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-12