Fuel Poverty
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-24
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

Yes, but 60% of people suffering energy poverty do not get it and that situation is going to be worse this winter because of Trump’s warmongering - the man for whom the Government rolled out the red carpet in the past week or so. While it seems the Government is not willing to extend the fuel allowance to those who need it, it wants to continue to give €1 billion a year to data centres so that they can get energy at half the price of the people who cannot turn on the heating this winter. It is unbelievable. It shows really twisted priorities. The Government will not help people who will literally be shivering with the cold this winter, afraid to turn on electric heaters, but it will give half-price electricity to the billionaire owners of the data centres. The money is there if the Government wants to at least give the fuel allowance to people over that threshold, although we would go further. It is completely unfair. People are going to suffer real hardship this winter unless the Government does something.

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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/2026-09-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-24