Home Heating Oil (Emergency Mineral Oil Tax Reduction) Bill 2026: Second Stage [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-22
============================================================

Mairéad Farrell (SF), Galway West

Tonight's motion is about the here and now. This Dáil has an opportunity to cut the price of oil tonight. The facts are very clear. People cannot pay their bills. They cannot afford to put fuel in their cars. They cannot afford to put oil in their tanks. That has happened on the Minister of State's watch. He is from the west of Ireland just like I am. He understands the impact that storms and sudden changes in the weather can have. The Government is telling people that it might do something in a number of weeks, although it has voted this measure down several times. My colleague, Deputy Pearse Doherty, has brought it before this House eight times. The Government says it might do something at some point. The people cannot wait because the people cannot pay. They cannot wait because there might be a sudden change in the weather. What will the Government say to people then? Will it tell them they can freeze in their homes?
Pensioners cannot afford this. Every single year, we have a discussion in here about pensioners who are struggling to heat their homes. That started before this crisis. The numbers of pensioners in poverty, in insecure housing and in homelessness are all increasing. There is certainly going to be a serious rise in the number of pensioners who cannot afford to put oil in their tanks to keep their houses warm. That is most certainly going to be on the Minister of State. He needs to listen to what the people are saying. He needs to listen to what we on this side of the House are saying. He needs to do right by the people. The people cannot wait any longer for the Government to decide whether it is going to act on oil. This disproportionately affects the people in the west of Ireland. The people in the west of Ireland have had enough. They should be allowed to heat their homes.

---

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/2026-09-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-22