Leaders’ Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-24
============================================================

Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow

I agree, and then I have a point of difference. I agree that there are lots of people out there who want to make the transition in their own lives and are still finding the gap too large. I was at the ploughing championships and met representatives of the Irish Farmers Association, IFA, in the IFA tent on this. Often, farmers are pitted against climate action but there are many farmers saying they want to put solar on their buildings and they need more support through the targeted agriculture modernisation scheme, TAMS. These are active issues we need to look at.
We need to do both, though. We need to help with the here and now, too. I will say to people right across the country that the measures we help them with, albeit they are classified as temporary in terms of trying to somewhat suppress the growth in energy prices, have a positive inflationary effect on the economy. Officials and economists in my Department estimate that the measures we have put in place to help reduce energy prices somewhat with excise reductions and the like have not been wasted measures and have actually kept down inflation by approximately 0.6%.
Officials and economists in my Department estimate that the measures we have put in place to help reduce energy prices somewhat, with the excise reductions and the likes, certainly have not been wasted measures but, rather, have actually kept down inflation by approximately 0.6%. When someone is shopping in the supermarket tonight with their basket of goods, that food would have cost approximately 0.6% more had we not taken these measures. We need to do both. However, I fully accept that we are facing the second energy shock in the European Union in half a decade and we need to transition much more quickly.

---

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