Fuel, Energy and Carbon Tax Relief: Motion [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Michael Fitzmaurice (II), Roscommon-Galway On behalf of Independent Ireland, whether you agree or disagree with the motion, I want to say thanks to each speaker for making the effort. We respect democracy and we respect different views. People are entitled to their views. There are a few things that need clarification. We have always put forward an option if people wanted to find the money. Some 340,000 or 350,000 flights come into Ireland, and people have a choice to fly or go on holiday. However, they do not have a choice about driving between 20 and 80 miles to work. The carbon tax is affecting that. We want solutions, but the problem is that the Government’s masters in Europe will not allow it to do implement solutions at the moment. You can fly wherever you want on a holiday and not pay carbon tax. When you have to go to work, however, you pay carbon tax. Something just does not add up. Retrofitting has been good. No one is against retrofitting - we are all for it – but a few things need to be made very clear. With the warmer homes scheme, if an engineer comes out and sees that someone has PVC windows and insulation on the walls, they will say “Bye, bye. No more. That is it”. That is the box ticked. Let no one cod themselves about what has been done. Second, if someone has a dormer house, the engineer will run away. They will not do insulation on dormer houses. Those things need to be made very clear. We in the Dáil need to get a grip of ourselves. If we have more electric vehicles and there is more help for people, we are not opposed to that. Let us look at the statistics and the facts, however. Most cars bought in Ireland this year and last year are in the €10,000 to €15,000 bracket. You cannot buy a new electric car for that amount. That is what people can afford. We have to deal with the cards we have been dealt. No one has anything against giving more grants for EVs or whatever if the Government wants to do that, but this is the reality. In addition, we just think we can run out of this room, flick a switch and go into a new world of wind, solar and whatever. Solar is very good in houses - there is no problem with it – but have a look at the TAMS grants. The system is now done on a points basis and farmers who wanted to get these grants are being refused them. That is the madness, and I smile about it at times. On wind, more turbines have been put up around the country. However, there is a reality here. Look at the amount of wind in July. It is nearly as if people would deprive us of a bit of sun or the good summer we had this year. When we got a bit of fine weather and the turbines did not move, we were down to 22% for the month of July. That is the reality. What do we do when that happens? Do we say that we are going to live in this fancy, lovely world and knock off the lights for 80% of the people and leave them high and dry? We need to focus on what we have. There are fossil fuels. Those fuels are going to be needed. If we move to other ways of doing things, that is fine. Provided it all adds up. If it does not add up, you do not make the decision. The one part that does not add up is for someone to tell people like those of us in the agricultural sector that carbon tax is a great thing and that it goes back to agriculture. In the past under REPS, when there was no carbon tax, farmers got nearly €1,000 more under their environmental payments. Those are the facts. They cannot be proved wrong. Show me why someone who does not have an alternative to using a harvester of 900 or 1,000 horsepower and who has to cut silage in one window of a particular month has to pay carbon tax when an alternative machine, whether electric or whatever, that can be used to do that work has not yet been made. If we want to live in the perfect world, there is a thing called hydrotreated vegetable oil, HVO. The latter would reduce someone’s emissions by something like 90%. Why are all the taxes on that if you want to tick the box? HVO, with modifications to a boiler, could be used in place of home heating oil and in diesel cars and tractors if it was made attractive to use. We put constructive proposals forward for the simple reason that we have to live realistically. We have to listen to the people. At the moment, people are hurting and when you are hurting you try and solve it and try and help them. That is our job collectively. It is not a case of “Me better than you” or anyone better than anyone else. We will disagree and have different viewpoints. Ultimately, however, people in each constituency voted for us to make their lives better. That is why I am asking the Minister of State to take that----- --- 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