Leaders’ Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-24
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Pearse Doherty (SF), Donegal

When I stood here this time last year, raising these questions with the Tánaiste, he was giving the same type of mantra: this would be a cost-of-living budget, and this had to be looked at in the round. People know their real-life experience in the last year. They feel worse off. They feel under more pressure. They have seen their grocery bills increase and their petrol, diesel and home heating oil increase. They have seen their rent increase. They have seen their mortgage increase. They have seen increases that the Government has brought forward in relation to student fees and other things that have put pressure on those families. They know the pressure that they are under. They are also looking at a government that is talking about billions of euro in surplus, and they are asking that some of that is used to support them now.
We have put forward a proposal time and again to the Government. We told the Government that it was absolutely wrong to withdraw those energy credits. There is a direct connection between what happened in households right across the State and the decision the Government took. When it decided to end energy credits, more families fell into arrears - that is just fact. The Tánaiste can shake his head all he wants. Let me tell him the facts. In February of this year, 316,000 households were in arrears. In the previous year, it was fewer than 60,000.

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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