Home Heating Oil (Emergency Mineral Oil Tax Reduction) Bill 2026: Second Stage [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2026-09-22 ============================================================ Rory Hearne (SD), Dublin North-West I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this Bill. It is absolutely true that people across this country really are struggling. This Government appears to be completely out of touch with the scale of their struggling. Barnardos recently released figures from a survey it did on families and children. It was very sad to see the lack of coverage it got and particularly from the Government. That survey found that in one in five families the parents are skipping meals so that their children can eat. This is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and we have tens of thousands of families where children are going hungry. There is something deeply wrong. One of the reasons it is so bad is because this Government is completely out of touch with what people are going through. It has completely failed to do a number of things. First, it needs to tackle the issue of price gouging and massive profiteering that is going on. The Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and Ministers stand up here and say, "What can we do about the cost of living? Energy costs are going up. It is because of the war in the Middle East. It is because of rising fuel costs." However, it is not rising fuel costs that are causing rents to rise by 10% a year. That was the Government's decision to allow the rents to rise at local authority level but also by removing the rent cap for the vulture funds. How much profit would the Minister of State say AIB made last year? AIB made €2 billion in profit last year, which is utterly scandalous. That is not including the other banks. How much profit was made by the big investor landlords? They made hundreds of millions of euro. How much profit was made by the ESB? It made €500 million. Literally billions are being taken in profit and the people are paying for it. They are paying through higher energy bills, rents, bank fees, insurance premiums and food costs. During the cost-of-living crisis, profiteering and price gouging are going on and we have seen an absolute failure of the Government to tackle that. There are other things the Government could be doing to tackle the cost of living, particularly its promise around childcare. Where are the reduced childcare fees? Where is the real delivery of affordable childcare? We in the Social Democrats have put forward a public childcare model that would actually deliver affordable childcare. Simon Harris has now been in government for 12 or 14 years. Where is his promise to reduce the cost of GP care for children? Someone with a child who is eight now has to pay the full cost of GP care. Where is the most basic promise of children and families being able to go to the doctor without having to be worried about the cost of it? It is scandalous. Families are choosing between paying the rent or paying electricity and gas bills, and bringing their child to the doctor. It is absolutely unacceptable in a so-called wealthy country that families are deciding whether to pay to eat or to pay for GP care. The Government could be doing so much more. The other area is the issue of energy costs. We in the Social Democrats believe there should be a targeted €400 energy credit. We could pay for that by a windfall tax on the energy companies. It is extremely frustrating that European leaders wrote to Simon Harris, the Tánaiste, to put this on the table for discussion at the recent meeting but he did not want to know about it. Why does he not want to put a windfall tax on the energy companies? Who is the Government afraid of? Everyone would back the Government if it put a windfall tax in the energy companies. Why is it not doing this? I believe it is still captured by an ideology about not interfering with the market. Not only does it not interfere but it actually helps the market when it comes to housing and rents. It subsidised the big investor funds. It is the same thing with the energy companies. It believes it cannot interfere and will not interfere. It is the same thing with the banks. The Government will not increase the levy on them and will allow them to screw people. The people have to pay for all this profiteering and the Government is not standing up for ordinary people who are really struggling. It is an absolute scandal and a shame that seven in ten young people say they see no future in this country. They say they just want to leave because it is the only way they would get a better quality of life. A nation has failed. We are a failed nation when the majority of young people say they see no hope and no future in this country. The Minister of State can shake head but that is the truth. Young people see no future in the country of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael because they have taken their hope from them and taken their future. They gave it to the vulture funds. They hammered young people during the austerity years and they continue to do so. Some 90% of them say they are negatively affected by the cost-of-living crisis. Every single young person is country is struggling and what is the Government doing for them? It is absolutely failing to give them a sense of a future to give them hope. Despite all the GDP growth and all the budget surpluses our young people say it clearly. What is the outcome of decades of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in government? It is that they see no future here. It is very sad. I hope those young people stay and fight to change this country. I hope they demand it to be different and join with those of us who are trying to push for a very different type of Ireland. The Government has failed them and we need to see substantial transformative change in this budget that reduces rents, provides genuinely affordable homes, provides targeted energy supports and really tackles those fundamental issues of the profiteering and price gouging that is going on in this country. --- 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