Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-19
============================================================

Jen Cummins (SD), Dublin South-Central

The fossil-fuel crisis is a time when we need to have a catalyst to move more towards renewables. I am regularly contacted by households that would really love to move to renewables and deeply retrofit their homes, but, unfortunately, they just cannot afford to do so. Even though they are able to apply for grants and all those things, which are very welcome, there is a shortfall in the grants by comparison with what is needed. For terraced houses moving from E1 to H2, somebody would still need to find €37,000. It is €39,000 for a semi-detached house and €45,000 for a detached house. It is a huge amount of money. What can households do? The cost of living is so expensive, but it can be reduced if we go to renewables. It is like a cycle that people are stuck in. They do not have the money upfront to change and, therefore, their bills are going to be higher. As previous contributors said, our electricity prices are the highest in Europe. I thank the Taoiseach.

---

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/2026-05-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-19