Energy Policy
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-09
============================================================

Paul Donnelly (SF), Dublin West

I welcome the report from the Minister. One of the key things is the national energy affordability task force report which is due to be published late this year. My concern and that of EnergyCloud is that it will come too late for the next budget because it will need investment. Although there is investment in the smart grid and all the things the Minister of State just outlined, I am unsure where it makes the connection between the 550,000 homes where people are living in energy poverty and how that connects with the seven items the Minister of State talked about in his reply.
I welcome the advancements but when one looks at the wasted renewable energy report from EnergyCloud for 16 months until 30 April, as I said, that is €756 million in retail wasted energy. This cannot come too soon for people in energy poverty who, as we speak, are probably not heating their homes. I know we are in June but we are not talking about warm weather today. I welcome the report but there needs to be more urgency about it. People are choosing between heating and eating need it now and they need that support now.

---

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