Fuel, Energy and Carbon Tax Relief: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23
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Richard O'Donoghue (II), Limerick County

All they are good at is taxation. They talked about electric vehicles and that we need to change to them. They never mention that electric vehicles are twice as heavy on tyres as normal cars and twice as heavy on road surfaces. If you replace a battery in an electric vehicle, it will cost you €20,000 to do so when it has been driven for 200,000 km. They never mentioned about the cobalt that goes into these batteries. They mentioned that this year one in four cars sold were EVs, so that is 25% this year. They forgot to mention that EVs count for 4% of vehicles in this country and that 96% of people drive fossil fuel vehicles. It is those people work in this country and who look after other people every day that the Government is taxing, despite the fact that they pay tax at work. That is what the Government represents.
As a businessman, I would tell the Government to cap the tax on fuel. Take the tax up to a certain amount and the Government would have the same amount of tax - it would not be down 1 cent - but when the price of fuel increases, we will pay the increased tax without the 50% tax or a 100% tax on top of that. This is what we are asking. That is a business approach. Those in government would know nothing about that because they are not in business. Civil servants all the way up; never had to worry about putting food on the table for other employees. That is what is wrong with those in government. They came through the Civil Service and they knows nothing other than taking money off the hard-working people of Ireland.

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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