Home Heating Oil (Emergency Mineral Oil Tax Reduction) Bill 2026: Second Stage [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-22
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Ken O'Flynn (II), Cork North-Central

I welcome the Bill. We have to talk about carbon tax. It punishes those who have the fewest choices in society. It punishes the families living in rural parts of Cork whom I represent. It punishes families at the lower end who cannot afford retrofitting. There is not much comfort in retrofitting when a person has to pay €18,000 for panels and gets €1,800 back from the Government. Some people in this House say that retrofitting is fantastic, but many people in the constituency I represent, which stretches from Ballincollig to Glanmire and Ballyvolane to Mayfield, cannot afford to get involved in retrofitting.
The price of home heating oil which increased by 44.6% in one year. A total of €160 in tax is taken on a fill of 1,000 litres of home heating kerosene. That is not sustainable. What the Government does not say out loud is that despite every excise reduction that it has made during this crisis, namely the 15 cent and 12 cent in respect of petrol and diesel and the 3 cent and 2.4 cent in respect of green diesel, not one cent was taken off the price of kerosene. There is a simple reason for that. It is because there is a non-carbon tax on the mineral oil and kerosene, the rate of which is zero. The Government decided that it was going to skip over home heating oil, knowing that the winter was coming, knowing how difficult it is for people to heat their homes and knowing about Members using the phrase - perhaps it is overused - about choosing between heating and eating. Many of my constituents in Cork are choosing just that, namely heating or eating.
Ministers House tell us that we have a surplus of €9 billion and that we have never been as wealthy. My constituents and the people I meet on the streets of Dublin, Sligo, Limerick and Wexford tell me a different story. They say that they are struggling at the till, at the pump and day to day. Some 500,000 people are in arrears with their gas and electricity bills, yet the Minister for Finance cannot pass a microphone without making some sarcastic comment and telling us how well off we are and that we should start saving. There is nothing to save. There is no money for a lot of people. There is very little in the back pocket. People are choosing poorer types of ingredients and products of a lesser quality because they cannot afford to do it any more. It has crept in, and not just in the social welfare class that some people like to talk about. It has crept into every part of society. It has crept into people who are continuously obliged to choose whether they will feed their kids or not. People are choosing what they can feed their kids. People are choosing whether to go to bed an hour earlier because of the cost of heating their homes. That is the reality of life. I sometimes feel that those who operate with in the bubble of this House do not understand what people are going through. We talk about free school meals, the books system and all the rest of it, yet the Government has dictated that most schools will now have to pay, on average, €600 per student for laptops and iPads. They have to sign up to packages. People are struggling continuously, and the Government has done nothing when it comes to kerosene and home heating oil.
This is a short Bill. It sets out provisions for six months in respect of mineral oil tax and a zero obligation in respect of home heating kerosene. The one fault I can see is that it states that the Minister must make a decision and sign it. If it is voted through this week, it is up to the Minister to bring the Bill forward. Truly, I do not trust the Minister to do that. That is the reality of it.

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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