Leaders’ Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-09-24 ============================================================ Ged Nash (LAB), Louth Energy costs are the absolute top priority for people across the country. The October budget in a couple of weeks’ time will be all about the cost of living. It has been a busy few weeks for the Tánaiste and his Cabinet colleagues. Two weeks to the budget and Simon’s sieve gets leakier by the day. There will be indexation of income tax bands and credits for PAYE workers but nothing to address the hit they took last year when working people were made to pay for tax cuts for diners and developers. There will be a fiver in the fuel allowance but no commitment yet to the extra four weeks again next year. There will be an extension of the cuts to excise on motor fuels and, as the Tánaiste has said time and again, something will be done to reduce the price of home heating oil. These measures will barely make a dent in the real costs for families. The Government seems only to be concerned with certain sectors of society - only some energy users and only some road users. Electricity and gas prices are already going up by at least 10%. Public transport fares are to rise by even more. The price of diesel and kerosene will rise further and it is oil and energy companies that are profiting massively off the crisis caused by Trump. Why is the Government not taking a comprehensive approach to energy affordability? The impact of higher oil prices is already feeding into higher inflation. Input costs for construction, transport, fertiliser and so on will lead to even higher food and housing costs next year. Wages will have to rise but the Government is turning its back, for example, on public sector workers. Families are really struggling with soaring grocery bills and unaffordable rents. They need to know the Government’s plan on energy costs. The Tánaiste needs to front up with them now. Last week, finance ministers from across Europe met with the Tánaiste. They gathered in Dublin. Six of them wrote to the Tánaiste a number of weeks ago in relation to taxing the windfall profits of power companies. A week on, where does the Government actually stand? I know what the Tánaiste said earlier but will this happen? We know that carbon tax will be paused again but consumers are getting the price signal of higher oil prices and that will change behaviour. What we are missing is the ring-fenced funds to help families who were hit the hardest. A windfall tax is needed to support households with targeted energy credits and to fund retrofitting. It could help to plug the carbon tax gap too. The energy crisis has been rolling on for months - in fact, it has been rolling on for years - and we need a proper plan. In May, the Minister for energy updated the Cabinet on progress from the national energy affordability taskforce. An action plan was supposed to be submitted to Government by the autumn - we have heard little of it since - focused on short, medium and longer-term measures to support households and businesses. That is all this Government seems to be doing. I have three questions. Has the Government received the energy affordability action plan and will it be published before the budget? Will it put an actual windfall tax on power companies and when? On behalf of families throughout the country, I have a very clear question: will the Government finally commit to a €400 targeted energy grant for families across the country? --- 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