Finance Bill 2026: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-06-09 ============================================================ Thomas Gould (SF), Cork North-Central The Minister of State’s Government was not where it should have been, namely in the Dáil doing its job, protecting ordinary workers, families, pensioners, farmers, hauliers and small businesses who were, and who still are, looking for help. The Minister of State can try to interrupt me but I talk to these people. I was on the line in Whitegate, Cork city and Youghal. Those people are still feeling it today. There are more than 300,000 people in arrears with electricity. A quarter of people who get gas are in arrears. There are people who use home heating oil who cannot pay their bills. Some people have to use their savings and some have to borrow from the credit union or family but some have to go cold because they do not have the money to put home heating oil in the tank. I know some of those people. The Minister of State might come in and say, "We are great boys" but----- --- 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/2026-06-09/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:05+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-09