Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-03
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Peadar Tóibín (AON), Meath West

The Taoiseach often answers questions nobody has asked in this situation on weekly basis. It is like a pretend debate where he answers questions that nobody has actually posed to him at all and he ignores the questions that are specifically posed to him. We are not looking to decrease the tax base. We are asking him to stop increasing the carbon tax base. That is what the actual question was. Right now 300,000 people in arrears on electricity bills in this country. How does it make the Taoiseach feel that he has families in a constant state of turmoil on the consumption of a basic staple? How does it make him feel that this is not an aberration? This is a permanent outcome of his energy policy in this country. Three hundred thousand people is an enormous number of people to be suffering significantly every single year in terms of energy. In May, the Government will put up the carbon tax on gas to €71 a tonne. In the middle of this energy crisis his strategy is to make it harder for those families to actually pay for gas and that will come back on the electricity that people pay for as well.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-03/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-03