Cost of Living Issues
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-26
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Pearse Doherty (SF), Donegal

There the Minister goes again saying the winter could be very challenging. People are telling me that it is very challenging right now. How more challenging does it need to be when you cannot pay to keep the lights on in your home? That is the pressure that people are under. The Minister is saying that we need to keep the power dry until the winter and budget 2027 and I am telling him that there are large numbers of people who are really under pressure. They are under pressure because of the budget that the Government brought forward.
The Government brought forward a budget of €9.4 billion last year and the Government left workers and families worse off. That is what the ESRI says. The ESRI is very clear on what the Government has done. They are worse off this year than they were last year. That is the Government's conscious decision. On top of that now, we have inflation. We have so much pressure bearing down on people.
Can the Minister not understand that people's lives are really challenging now? What they are seeing is a Government that thought it would have a surplus of over €4 billion, now it is twice that amount and the Minister is still not willing to alleviate the pressures on those families right now.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:04+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-26