Cost of Living: Motion [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2026-07-01 ============================================================ Cian O'Callaghan (SD), Dublin Bay North I thank the proposers of this motion for giving us the opportunity to raise important issues around the cost of living. The Social Democrats have said time and again that the Government needs to introduce, as an emergency measure, targeted energy credits. The Government seems to have no interest in doing that. It has no interest in the fact that people on low incomes across the country are struggling to pay their electricity bills and keep food on the table. Even before Iran was attacked, people on low incomes were feeling the pressure. To ignore that time and again and to pass a budget that took supports away and did not replace them with targeted measures for people who needed them most was nothing short of cruel. When I think back over the past year, one of the memories that stands out is when I visited the Irish Wheelchair Association in Clontarf in my constituency and met with disabled people after the budget. They were horrified that the Government had decided to reduce their incomes by about €1,400. They were aghast and asked why they were being targeted with those cuts by the Government. Why was the Government being so cruel to people who were already struggling to heat their homes and get by day to day? On top of the emergency measures, namely, the cost-of-disability payment and targeted energy credits, we need investment in permanent measures to bring down the cost of living. My colleague, Deputy Whitmore, spoke about that. It makes no sense that we live on a windy island on the edge of Europe yet are so far behind on wind energy and solar energy. We have put forward proposals to increase the grants for solar panels to help households permanently reduce their electricity bills. Those are the kinds of measure the Government could and should take, would have a long-term effect and would get us out of needing emergency supports. We need emergency supports now because the Government has not done that but we also need to invest in permanently reducing households' energy bills. That has to be a key part of the conversation. It is unbelievable that, after years of talking about the need to electrify and decarbonise, the Government cannot even get EV charging right. It is a basic bit of infrastructure and it is not regulated. There was news today of charges on the public network being more expensive than using petrol or diesel. We are in 2026. How is the Government not able to get something basic like that right? It has not been able to address EV charging for people who do not have driveways and only have on-street parking. Years later, it just has not got around to that. That is before we talk about the inability to develop wind energy. There is no one from Fine Gael in the Chamber but it is 15 years since Fine Gael took office and we have no offshore wind energy in the country. We actually did have one wind farm when it took office. There is an incredible inability by the Government to deliver and to listen to people on lower incomes who are crying out and need support. Our continued reliance on fossil fuels means we are one of the most exposed in Europe, which means our electricity costs are highest and we are most exposed to shocks. There is no excuse for the inability to move towards renewable energy. That has to be the approach. The Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, has examined the grants that the Government has given out and has shown it has pursued a two-tier strategy. It has given grants to households with means and locked out households that are just above the thresholds for full costs. The latter cannot avail of the grants because they do not have matching funds. These are low--to-middle-income households struggling with bills but unable to avail of retrofit grants or grants for moving to EVs because the Government has designed those grants in a way that is accessible to people on better incomes while those on squeezed incomes without extra money to match the grants are forgotten about. They are faced with higher and higher prices. The Government has created a two-tier system. Of course, this is being driven by the Government's overall economic strategy. We have a two-tier economy. Some companies are able to afford high rents and high fees and to pay high wages but others are being squeezed out. Everybody else in the country is being squeezed out. They are not able to afford ever-increasing housing costs, an ever-increasing cost of living and ever-increasing electricity costs. The Government just forgets about them. The Government could and should be investing in renewables in a way that makes them accessible to low- to middle-income households. That would result in a permanent reduction in the cost of living and in the costs facing smaller businesses while also helping us to meet our climate targets so that we would not have to pay out billions of euro in fines in the coming years. That is the trajectory we are on at the moment and it needs to be reversed immediately. --- 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/2026-07-01/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:06+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-01