Fuel, Energy and Carbon Tax Relief: Motion [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Ruairí Ó Murchú (SF), Louth Many have said it before; we all accept that Government is not responsible for what has happened with the war in Iran. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are responsible and we are all suffering as a result. However, let us be absolutely clear. There are things the Government can do. It did reduce the cost of petrol and diesel when it was forced to. We all know an insufficient amount was done in relation to that. How do we know that? We know that because we can look at the forecourts at the minute. We are looking at €2.20 per litre of diesel and costs that we could not have expected. In the long term, we know it has also failed in relation to delivering on wind power and alternatives. We have a real problem, particularly when we are talking about home heating oil and the 700,000 households that have no choice but to use home heating oil. The carbon tax is not going to allow them, facilitate them or force them into using something else. They have no choice. I was on cheapestoil.ie. The average price of heating oil in County Louth today is €1,605.97 for 1,000 litres. The cheapest is €1,559 for 1,000 litres. That is phenomenal. The price last year was in and around €900. We are talking about removing the carbon tax on that in order to mitigate at least some of the pain. We are talking about €183 - something that could be done today that could impact on people's lives tomorrow. There are many who are waiting because they have heard kites flown that something may be done in relation to home heating oil. It needs to be done now. It needs to be done straight away. Today, the Irish Cancer Society revealed that cancer patients are losing an average of €16,200 in annual income. If we get into that, they face monthly travel-associated----- --- 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/2026-09-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-23