Energy Policy: Motion [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17 ============================================================ Pearse Doherty (SF), Donegal Gabhaim buíochas le PBP faoi choinne an rún seo a thabhairt os comhair na Dála anocht. Sílim go bhfuil sé ag an am ceart agus muid ag amharc ar an gcáinaisnéis. Week after week, workers and families are being hit with soaring energy bills. We hear it every single day. Unfortunately, we have had company after company in the past two weeks telling us they are putting up their prices again. There are double digit increases. That is another blow to families who are already stretched to the limit. The people out there are being told they have to find hundreds more euro every year. They simply do not have that type of money. That is the reality. I do not know if the Minister is hearing it in his constituency but I am definitely hearing it in my constituency and right across this country everywhere I go. The reality is stark. Ireland already has the highest electricity prices in Europe. We now have more than 320,000 households in arrears on their electricity bills. One in four households in the State cannot pay their gas bill because they have fallen behind. The statistics that we are seeing now are staggering. These are real people who do not have the money to pay their bills when they fall due. These figures should be setting off alarm bells in Government Buildings. The Minister should be standing up and asking what he can do here. Instead, he waltzes in here as if there is nothing to see. Those figures reveal the reality that these families are facing every single day and the scale of the crisis that ordinary people have to meet. That is before we even talk about the hundreds of thousands of other families who are able to pay their bills but are stretching themselves doing it. Life has become so unaffordable. People who expected to be able to enjoy the odd luxury here and there simply cannot do it any more. Families, workers and pensioners are all fighting to stay afloat and to avoid falling into debt. Those people are quietly rationing their heat, cutting back on electricity and leaving their home-heating oil tank empty because they simply cannot afford another fill. It is baffling that time and again Government opposes energy credits on the grounds that they are not targeted. The truth is that the existing supports, important as they are, are not reaching enough people. That is a problem affecting not just a small minority but it is affecting households right across the State. That is why Sinn Féin has been very clear in this. We are calling for a return of energy credits as an emergency measure to provide immediate relief. Energy credits were always supposed to be an emergency response while the Government got its act together to implement reforms that would bring down prices permanently. However, those reforms never came. The Government never came with a single idea. Instead, the Government repeatedly voted down the ideas that we in Sinn Féin brought forward, practical proposals that would drive down costs. We all see the result every single day. Irish households remain entrapped with the highest electricity prices in Europe while record numbers fall into arrears. Government failure has been allowed to become the new normal. This crisis did not happen overnight nor can it be blamed solely on a war or global instability. Every country has faced those pressures. The real question here is: why does Ireland still have the highest prices in Europe? People know the answer to that question. The Government has pursued a reckless expansion of data centres without ensuring the necessary grid infrastructure was in place first. It can commission all the reports it likes and can hire all the consultants to tell it what it wants to hear but none of that changes that reality. Officials within the Department of energy have acknowledged that data centres are driving up prices for everyone else. They pay a fraction of what ordinary households and small business pay. This is the system that Fianna Fáil created and that Fine Gael has presided over for years. To make matters worse, data centres are now being prioritised ahead of housing development in the middle of a housing emergency. Sinn Féin is having none of that. That is why we introduced legislation to ensure housing comes first. We have consistently put forward proposals and practical measures to reduce energy costs to strengthen our electricity system and to support struggling households. Time and again Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and their supporters have voted against those reforms. Time and again they have chosen not to act. Workers and families deserve better. They deserve a government that understands the scale of the crisis and is prepared to take the action to address the causes of the high energy costs and not simply manage the consequences. The message from households across the State is clear: enough is enough. It is time to put ordinary Irish people first. People cannot afford more excuses, more delays or more inaction. The Government needs to stop putting data centres first and put people first. They need relief, they need it now and it is time to deliver for them. --- 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/2026-09-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-17