Finance Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages Dail Éireann — 2026-06-17 ============================================================ Robert Troy (FF), Longford-Westmeath I thank Deputy O'Callaghan for raising this issue. To be fair to him, the amendment calls for a report to be published within "3 months of the implementation of the new Mineral Oil Tax rates ... on the impact of an energy credit of €400 for each household with an income up to €70,000 per annum." While I accept he is trying to generate a debate here today and that it will not put a cost on the Exchequer here and now, but I presume what he is trying to do is to ensure that this can feed into the budgetary process for the budget that is a number of months away. I do agree, and as I said at the outset, the way we should be helping people is through targeted supports. We have demonstrated our commitment to helping those who are in the most need of support through the fuel allowance and extending the eligibility criteria for the working family payment, which ensured that an extra 40,000 people on the working family payment got a fuel allowance for the very first time, but we do need to go further. There is an acknowledgement, certainly from my party in government, that there are a cohort of people who are falling short of some of the supports that were introduced. That is why there is a determination by us in government to ensure that we look to that cohort in the upcoming budget. The budgetary process is well under way for budget 2027. In the past number of days, we had the national economic dialogue, which brought together civil society, the Government, union representatives, and representatives of business, academia and research. My Department will look at all available data from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, and other State agencies and representative bodies in order to put together a budget that will be fair, impactful and progressive. That is what we want to achieve. In the next number of weeks, we will see the summer economic statement, which will outline the spending parameters open to us for budget 2027. I assure all Deputies that all data will be looked at to ensure that we bring forward a budget that is fair. They will have the opportunity, when budget day comes, to present an alternative budget, as is the case every single year. At that stage, the Deputies will have to come forward with proposals that are costed and we will have an opportunity to compare our respective positions. A point that has been made on a number of occasions is about cuts that were implemented to particular sections of society when temporary measures concluded. The difficulty is when you introduce temporary measures, and when they are reintroduced for a time, people tend to have them embedded into their daily living and their expectations. In particular, Deputy O'Callaghan referenced people in receipt of disability payments who, when their temporary measures expired, were at a loss. That was the case, but they were temporary measures that were introduced at a particular time. There is a commitment, and work is well advanced, to introduce permanent measures to ensure that we put in place the right supports, not on a temporary basis, but on a permanent one into the future. In budget 2027, we will see the Government living up to our commitment in that regard. It is important that we invest in our infrastructure and that is why the Government approved the landmark €3.5 billion investment in Ireland's electricity grid infrastructure across 2026 to 2030 as part of the national development plan. This represents the largest single investment in the country's electricity network in its history. A sum of €1.5 billion was allocated to ESB Networks and €2 billion to EirGrid, which will enable both companies to significantly increase capital investment to expand their onshore and offshore electricity transmission and distribution network infrastructure, which is critical as we move away from fossil fuels. The Electricity (Supply) (Amendment) Act 2025 enacted last November provided the legal mechanism for the State to make a €1.5 billion equity investment in ESB Networks and increase its statutory borrowing limit from €12 billion to €17 billion. The €1.5 billion was transferred from the Central Fund to the ESB in mid-December, ensuring ESB Networks can begin delivering on this ambitious onshore grid investment programme next year. Work is happening on putting in place the necessary investment in infrastructure for this transmission. We are all at one that we would like to see it accelerated and done in a more efficient manner. --- 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/2026-06-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:09+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-17