Home Heating Oil (Emergency Mineral Oil Tax Reduction) Bill 2026: Second Stage [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-22
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Roderic O'Gorman (GP), Dublin West

Families need help with their energy bills this winter but deferring the carbon tax is the very worst way of going about that. Irish households are suffering from a cost-of-living crisis that, at its heart, is driven by our country's dependence on fossil fuels. The carbon tax remains the only part of our entire taxation system which is designed to help the country and help individual families break that dependence on fossil fuels. To defer the carbon tax at this point would fundamentally undermine this goal. Some 26% of Irish households are dependent on home heating oil, and the price of kerosene has risen by 59% in the past year. That is not driven by the carbon tax. It is driven by international events. Even if the government was to defer the carbon tax, this fuel continues to be subject to volatility, with Iranian attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, or Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.
Neither the Bill proposed by Sinn Féin today nor the motion from Independent Ireland tomorrow have set out how the revenue lost through carbon tax deferrals will be made up. Without this, the Sinn Féin Bill will mean that in 2027 fewer homes will get new renewable energy systems and fewer low-cost solar panels will be installed. Reducing funding for these measures is the worst thing that could be done in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis and the Green Party will not support any legislation that has the effect of doing this.
There are alternative ways in which we can help Irish households this winter and in the future. The Green Party has proposed a fossil fuel inflation fund of €2.5 billion in 2027 from the surplus. This would fund targeted energy credits through 2027 for households with the lowest 70% of incomes, ensuring support goes to those who need that support the most. The fossil fuel inflation fund would also be deployed to support extra long-term measures to increase the retrofit of homes, increase the installation of low-cost solar panels, and see more replacement of oil heating systems with renewable systems. Those are the sort of long-term measures that, to date, have been completely missing from the Government's response.
The budgetary surplus that the country enjoys right now provides us with an incredible opportunity to ensure energy security for tens of thousands of Irish households and take major steps to reduce our carbon emissions. We need a Government that will go beyond the short-termism that we have seen since the Iran war started in February and a Government that will actually use budget 2027 to dramatically increase the level of funding for home energy measures.

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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