Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-17
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

I will be working throughout July. I hope people get a bit of sunshine in July but the way things are going it is a fairly rare occurrence these days.
The issue the Deputy raised is serious. The one issue he studiously avoided mentioning, bar indirectly when quoting the Governor of the Central Bank, was the war in the Middle East. He ignored the two wars - ignored them completely - and he said other things were the drivers of increases in energy prices. The driver has been clearly the war in Iran. Everybody knows that and he ignored it in his presentation.
We acknowledge there is a cost-of-living issue. The Deputy quoted from the Governor of the Central Bank. What did the Governor say? The Deputy can quote it back to me if he wishes. It was that global pressures will create inflationary pressures here. That is true across Europe.
When the governor of the European Central Bank spoke to the EU Council at the commencement of the war, she said things were going in the right direction. Inflation was coming down to around 2% and growth was happening again in the European economy more widely. The war hit and we saw what happened in Qatar. The positive news is we have, hopefully, a sustainable peace. That will lead and already has led to a reduction in the global market price of oil and gas. That will continue for the rest of the year and into the new year. Even better outcomes could develop from that.
We are very conscious of inflationary pressures. That is why in the budget and in the recent package of €750 million, we intervened to alleviate pressures as much as possible on people. Some reductions in the budget were of a permanent nature. We increased core social protection rates by €10 and introduced a significant targeted increase in child support payments. The fuel allowance was increased and expanded to take in those on the working family payment. A one-adult household on the lone parent payment with one child will see an increase of 9%, that is €1,800, from the Department. A two-adult household will see an increase of just over 8% or €2,300, in their payments.
On the broader issue of those in arrears, there are about 184,000 in arrears on electricity over 90 days. The Department of energy and the Department of Social Protection will further analyse that and see how our resources can be targeted on that issue as they have been in other areas through MABS. We have helped families and so on deal with situations that they are in.
They key issue of course is we have to replace fossil fuels with renewables. The Deputy mentioned the carbon tax. Substantial money goes to farmers - 60% of ACRES is from the Exchequer. Substantial money goes on retrofitting. Since 2019, over €1.8 billion has been spent on retrofitting. We have been able to provide energy upgrades to 268,000 homes. We could not have done that if we did not have the carbon tax in place.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:09+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-17