Finance Bill 2026: Second Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-09
============================================================

Robert Troy (FF), Longford-Westmeath

I thank all the Deputies for their contributions today. I join in the congratulations to my colleague. It is a great honour to be elected at any stage but he will be particularly pleased to be re-elected during a by-election. I offer him my best wishes for the remainder of this term.
Neither I nor anyone in Government are patting themselves on the back. We are acknowledging and outlining the measures we have introduced in response to a global issue. The one thing we can all agree on is the need to continually monitor our response to these international high energy costs. At the very beginning, when the first set of schemes, savings or supports were introduced, we said this would be kept under constant review and that we would revisit it, if needed. We did that. It is also right and proper to say that it is not possible to offset all of the recent market-driven fuel price increases using the tax system. Some in the Opposition will say that although not all will. It is fair to say that these measures, together with the non-tax supports introduced by Government, will provide significant mitigation, supporting those who are experiencing the most acute impact of the increases in fuel prices. The total estimated cost of the support packages the Government has introduced is over €750 million, making Ireland's support package one of the largest in Europe on a per capita basis.
I will say something to the Members opposite. I recently travelled to Belfast and had a very productive meeting with the their party colleague, the Minister, John O'Dowd. He too acknowledges the real challenges in trying to protect every single person. He would not claim to be able to do it either.
I will say that what we primarily spoke about was financial literacy, credit unions, the promotion of financial services and how we can work together but he was fair in his acknowledgement of the challenges that all governments have. Each of us across the various political parties, whether talking to sister parties in Europe, or when we travel as part of our membership of the multilateral fora, knows that every single government throughout the globe is facing huge challenges in bringing in supports. It is not possible, despite how it is portrayed, to absolve and mitigate all of the effects of the energy increases.
Deputy Doherty raised concerns with regard to the diesel rebate scheme and cash flow issues for recipients. The Government is cognisant of the current difficulties being faced by licensed operators. I would highlight that the diesel rebate scheme will provide much-needed cash flow to the sector. I can confirm that Revenue has reviewed its internal processes and identified several IT solutions, which are to be implemented to issue refunds faster to compliant taxpayers.
The Deputy was also critical of the fact that reductions applied to diesel and petrol were also applied to aviation fuels. As the Deputy will be aware, because, to be fair, he is competent in his job, the taxation of energy products in Ireland is governed by the EU energy tax directive. This directive prescribes the minimum rates for fuels and fuel uses. The directive prescribes that in addition to adhering to minimum rates, the excise duty rate on particular fuel types used for propellant purposes must be consistent across all propellant uses for that fuel. This means that the same mineral oil tax rate must apply to heavy oil, whether it is used as a propellant in motor vehicles, aircraft or waterborne vehicles. Ireland has no discretion in this regard, and we are simply adhering to EU law, as we must. Of course, the facts do not support the Deputy’s narrative. He is portraying a different issue as if we made a conscious decision to not exclude private jet fuel. That is not factual. It cannot be done, and the Deputy knows it, but he wants to portray his narrative, and he wants to be able to stick it up on Facebook later this evening. That is the point.

---

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