Cost of Living: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-01
============================================================

Peadar Tóibín (AON), Meath West

The Aontú Private Members' motion is designed to reduce the cost of living for families. It is designed to reduce the pressure on families across the country. The Minister of State is right to some extent. There is no doubt that the wars in Ukraine and in Iran, for example, have increased the cost of living for families. However, this Government is the main architect of the rip-off Ireland that is hurting this country at the moment. The Government can list a range of different supports it is giving to families, such as child benefit and fuel supports, but most people would rather it stopped taking the money out of their pockets just to give it back to them in another support. That is the key issue here. The Minister of State mentioned supports for energy costs. The truth is that most of middle-Ireland is considered too rich by the Government for those supports but they are actually too poor still to pay for electricity and fuel. As a result, half a million of those families are currently in energy arrears.
We, too, want Ireland to decouple from fossil fuels. We want Ireland to become self-sufficient in terms of energy. Energy independence is as importance as fuel independence. Being dependent on the Middle East and on Russia is a major exposure for this country. However, the way to do it is with a carrot rather than a stick. I am the chair of the Meath on Track campaign. We have been campaigning since 1994 for a rail line. The earliest possible time that will arrive is 2036, that is, if nothing stops it, and there is likely to be another slip in relation to that. We want to see solar panels put on the roofs and increased supports for retrofitting in this country. Most families would give their right hand to get out of fossil fuel dependence and to have the public transport solutions they need but the Government will not provide it for them.
This Government has also spoken about renewables. The biggest brake on renewables is this Government. We have been told for years that Ireland is going to become the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy - of wind energy. Yet, in recent times, we have become a net importer of electricity. We are going in the opposite direction to the rhetoric that the Government is using in these terms. We have been told about offshore wind. Forgive me if I am cynical in relation to this. This Government has had six offshore wind conferences since 2021. We have no offshore wind energy generation. Not one turbine is operating in this country. The Government is brilliant at developing conferences, brochures, plans and policies. Sticking a turbine in the sea does not work for the Government though. That is the major problem with all of this. Dysfunction in the system is holding back renewable energy.
We have, at the moment, marginal pricing in energy pricing in this country. That means the price of a unit of electricity is priced at the last unit that is added on to the system. If we keep adding data centres in this country, we are never going to get out of the grip of gas. We are never going to run fast enough to get free of gas being the marginal unit of electricity produced. The Government is going in the opposite direction in terms of freeing this country from renewable energy. The grid is creaking. It is grinding to a halt. Dispatch down, constraints and bottlenecks are all brakes to the addition of renewable energy. Every single turbine that is added has a diminishing return. We are paying €500 million a year to renewable energy providers to stop producing electricity. The dysfunctional system means the network costs and the stabilising costs of the network are actually now more than the wholesale cost of producing electricity in Ireland, and that is adding to everybody's bill.
I want to talk about Sinn Féin's contribution. Sinn Féin Members spent their time attacking Opposition TDs on this while letting the Government off the hook. Let us be clear about this. Aontú voted for the excise cuts that helped people over the past few months. Incredibly, Sinn Féin was the only Opposition party that voted against the excise cuts that helped people over the past few months. Incredibly, Sinn Féin is now arguing against those excise increases, having voted against them being cut in the first place. Deputy Guirke spoke about the fact that Aontú did not speak on the Finance Bill. That is rubbish. Incredibly, Deputy Guirke, the stone-thrower, did not speak on that Bill; we in Aontú did. In 2024, Deputy Guirke had the lowest speaking contribution in the Dáil. He spoke for one hour in a whole year in total. Deputy Guirke is the Fr. Stone of Irish politics and he thinks being a TD is a remote job. It is not. Those who turn up here make the decisions, and not turning up and staying silent does not help the people of Meath.
It must also be said that the Government was pulled kicking and screaming to reduce these costs, and the reason for this was people power. It was because of ordinary people taking to the streets of this country and demanding help. Ordinary people, whose businesses, families and jobs were falling around them, took to the streets in desperation and this forced the Government's hands. If we are honest, the major reason this Government is not increasing excise until September is that it is fearful the protestors are going to come back onto the streets on this issue and it does not want these protesters to put bad luck on this EU Presidency. That is the biggest issue here.
The frustrations people have about the level of tax on fuel at the moment is because the tax they are paying is ending up in waste. That is a major issue. Most people do not mind paying taxes as long as they get value for money in the services those taxes are producing. We can look at the level of Government waste that is happening. Some €50 million spent on an Iarnród Éireann IT system that never worked. When we asked the Taoiseach about it, he did not know the answers. Some €300 million has been spent on metro north and not a shovel has been put in the ground. When it was announced 20 years ago, the price of it was €2 billion but now the price is edging towards €16 billion. There is the 100 electric buses that were bought that never moved an inch because somebody forgot to provide an electricity charger for those buses. There is the recent €127,000 for the HSE Kerry bike shed, following on from the €336,000 Dáil bike shed, and the €10 million that is going to be spent on the Dublin City Council offices in Wood Quay that it plans to knock in three years' time. Then we have the €2.4 billion on the national children's hospital, which is basically a monument to Government waste at the moment. There are so many examples of taxpayers' money, which is extracted from their pockets, being incinerated by Government over and over again.
One of the most insidious levels of Government waste that never gets looked at in this country are the overspends on an annual basis.
From 2021, the Government has been overspending by €5 billion a year and it has come under pressure from IFAC in relation to it. Health accounts for 40% of that overspend and capital infrastructure overruns saw €1.6 billion in one year.
At the heart of the cost-of-living crisis in this country is the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael-Independents Government tax gauging the people of Ireland and allowing for dysfunction to reign in terms of the infrastructure and the spend in this country.
Ireland has the highest electricity prices in the whole of Europe and the second highest in the world. Incredibly, ESB made a profit of €3 billion just in the past four years. ESB is a public company operating on the basis of Government policy and that company is now looking to increase electricity prices today. Does the Minister of State not see the problem here? How can he stand over a Government company making €3 billion profit in four years and then in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis jack up the cost of electricity? The fact the Government is allowing that to happen is a major problem.
Last year there was €4.3 billion in fuel taxes and €1.2 billion in carbon tax, a tax that hardly existed five years ago. These are excruciating costs for families. They are hurting and damaging families. They are damaging businesses. These high energy costs are bad for the economy. That is never discussed here, that jobs are going abroad and businesses are closing because the Government is a high energy cost Government. The Government must gets to grips with that and realise what levers are in place. One of the levers is excise costs. Over the next six months, the Government wants to increase excise five times in a cost-of-living crisis. I am asking the Minister of State not to do that and to back the Aontú Private Members' motion.

---

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