Financial Resolution No. 2: Mineral Oil Tax Dail Éireann — 2026-03-24 ============================================================ Paul Murphy (PBP), Dublin South-West This resolution is very revealing about the Government's approach. Earlier, we had a resolution that introduced inadequate measures, small cuts in excise on petrol and diesel but no price caps, no guarantee, no security for people into the future and nothing to ensure there is not profiteering. Those measures are time limited until the end of May and could be wiped away by the end of the week. Prices could go back down to €2 per litre and then go back up again by the end of the week. It is something but it is also very inadequate, effectively nothing. On home heating oil, it will mean a €20 saving on 1,000 litres when the price has very close to doubled over the past number of weeks. That is insulting to people. The underlying thread we hear from the Ministers is, "Ah sure, we're getting out of the bad weather. People will be grand." They certainly will not be; they are struggling. We have very minimal measures for the general population but then we hear that Resolution No. 2 is a targeted measure. It is a measure which, unlike the ones we voted on earlier that come in tonight and last just until the end of May, is backdated to 1 January and it goes all the way to the end of June. That is fantastic, we think. This must be for the disabled people who were hit by the Government with €1,400 of cruel cuts in the budget. They have been on the streets demanding again and again an emergency disability payment, not the full cost-of-disability payment which they were promised, not even getting back the €1,400 that the Government took off them. It should just give disabled people €400, which is a tiny amount that will go some way to cushion them from the blow, a targeted amount for them. However, when we read the detail of Financial Resolution No. 2, I am afraid we discover this is not a targeted measure for disabled people but a targeted measure for hauliers. They will get an extra rebate on diesel to go back to the start of January and to go all the way to the end of June, but ordinary householders will not. Of course hauliers need support. Of course their prices going up will feed through into the rest of the economy in what people pay for the goods they buy in shops and so on. However, what is the measure to do that? It is obvious. It is the same measure as for everybody else. It is dealing with the issue of the price of diesel. However, instead of actually doing that in an effective way for everybody such that they get the benefit and, therefore, consumers and the population at large get the benefit at the end of the day, the Government has done a special scheme just for businesses. It is very revealing of the Government's approach to this new cost-of-living crisis. I do not think the Government gets it that for ordinary people this cost-of-living crisis comes on top of an existing cost-of-living crisis. People are really suffering. People were already really suffering two months ago. We remember the shocking statistic about four in ten parents skipping or cutting back on meals in order to ensure that their kids have enough to eat. We know there are over 300,000 people in arrears on their energy bills right now. We know that the Government's budget made all of that worse. Despite the misinformation that is put out there by the Taoiseach, we know and the ESRI, the Parliamentary Budget Office and so on will say that the Government's budget made it worse and made it hardest for the poorest groups in our society. That was the impact of its budget: increasing child poverty and increasing rates of poverty, including for older people. The Minister and the Minister of State have woken up to react to that. They are welcome. Let me tell them what the Parliamentary Budget Office said. It said the budget increased poverty rates from 11.7% in 2024 to 13.2% in 2025. --- 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/2026-03-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:03+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-24