Deputy Mary Lou McDonald-- speech from 16 Dec 2025

...attack on Bondi Beach on Sunday. Our thoughts are with those families, with the injured, with the wider Jewish community, and of course with the people of Australia and Sydney. Eir yesh dje, go raibh an anam naka. Teaseach, households hammered by relentless hikes in energy electricity prices are in disbelief today. They've awoken to the news that their bills are set to increase even further. Electricity network charges are being hiked, forcing hard-pressed households to carry the can for upgrading the grid. Customers here, as you know, are squeezed to breaking point just to light and heat their homes. They pay amongst the highest electricity prices in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of working households can't pay their energy bills because of these non-stop hikes. And price-gouging energy companies are making bumper profits to the tune of millions, if not billions. In the last couple of months, we've seen energy companies, one after the other, jack up their prices so that a million households now face higher bills this Christmas. They fleece people at every turn and your government hasn't laid a glove on them. Worse than that, you've actually enabled this behaviour. At the same time, you cancelled energy credits in a budget of 9.4 billion euros, where, astonishingly, you managed to leave working people worse off. You've also increased the price of petrol, of diesel, of home heating oil, and now people face another increase to their already unaffordable electricity bills. The upgrading and modernisation of our national grid is incredibly important. It does have to be a priority. God knows real progress is badly needed after decades of terrible planning and chronic underinvestment by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. But Tisha could simply beggar's belief that ordinary households would be hit with an other increase to improve the grid, while energy companies laugh all the way to the bank. Energy companies are making millions, eye-watering profits. And it's just incredible, therefore, that struggling customers will be asked to fork out again. If you really cared about fairness, if your government cared at all, you'd put the onus for funding this upgrade where it belongs. On the mega-rich energy companies, on other large energy consumers, you wouldn't go to ordinary people again. Government shouldn't be adding a single red cent to these rip-off bills, especially during such tough times. You should be about getting costs down, of reducing electricity prices and making life affordable. Government's failure to tackle the energy rip-off leads people in desperate situations, and not alone are you not doing anything to help working people, you also stand by as these bills will be increased again. Tisha, can I ask you, do you think this is a fair way to treat people? People already fleeced by non-stop electricity price hikes. What's your response to today's news? And will you intervene as head of government to put a stop to this increase? Thank you, Deputy MacDonald. Tisha. Thank you, Ciancola. Thank you, Deputy for raising the issue. But before I begin, I want to take a moment as well to express my sympathy to and solidarity with the Australian people, and with our Jewish community here in Ireland, as they come to terms with the horror and the grief of the mass shooting event at Bandai Beach on Sunday. Fifteen people, including a ten-year-old child and a Holocaust survivor, were cruelly murdered, and more than 40 others were injured for no other reason than their Jewish faith and identity, as they gathered to celebrate Hanukkah. I am acutely conscious of the feelings of vulnerability and isolation that an event like this can have on our own small Jewish community. And I want today to take this opportunity to send a very clear message from this style and as head of government, that our Jewish neighbours are an important and very valued part of our society, and that there can be no place for anti-Semitism or anti-Semitic rhetoric in our state. In respect of the issues raised by Deputy MacDonald Culley, in the first instance, say that the Price Review 6, which will facilitate investment of up to 13 billion, up to 18 billion in our energy grid, is absolutely essential, and will copper fasten and benefit every job in the country, every potential future job in the country, will underpin the building of 300,000 houses and their connection to the grid, the electrification of the public transport system. It is a major, major decision by government. The government have allocated 3.5 billion in equity that helps to leverage and underpin the enormous investment that will occur from this. And so in many respects, it's a decisive moment in respect of the energy grid. I acknowledge fully and understand the pressure that people are under in respect of energy bills. And part of this announcement is the work, of course, of the National Energy Affordability Task Force, which was established by the Minister, which has already published its first report. And its task is to identify measures that will reduce electricity prices in the short term and on a permanent basis. And some of its measures were delivered on the Budget 26. And these include, you know, the decision on VAT, in extending the reduction of VAT from 13 to 9 percent on electricity, and also significant work in relation to the fuel allowance. Again, we've included those on working family payment. Extra 50,000 people will be paid in March, backdated to January, in terms of the fuel allowance. And, of course, we increased the fuel allowance, and now an extra 140 will be available to over 450,000 recipients between September and April. And the €400 income tax for disregard for households in energy involved in energy micro generation. And we've extended that as well. And, of course, in terms of the Budget measures more generally. And then the retrofitting, which has really grown very, very significantly over the last number of years, and is making a real difference in terms of many houses. A deep retrofit can save over 1,100. About 228,000 upgrades have happened now, in terms of homeowners. About 1.5 billion has been allocated to that. And this year alone another 64,500 home energy upgrades will happen, in addition to 14,300 local authority upgrades. So we are progressing a significant change in terms of energy consumption within our households more generally. But that Affordability Task Force has to look at the more fundamental issue of the regulatory framework that governs energy prices in this country. And that is a key objective. Thank you, Tisha. Allied with European initiatives that will be required in terms of how energy is priced on the European market. So, we have had price hike after price hike. As I said earlier, not a glove placed on any of these gouging companies. A million households now facing higher bills this Christmas. Over 300,000 households in energy arrears. An affordability task force, so-called, that has done absolutely bugger all to achieve affordability for those households and for those struggling families. And a government that is quite prepared to simply sit back and let households suffer. That's what I hear. Nobody is contesting the need for investment in the grid. But I think as government, you need to accept the reality of what is happening in households right across the land as we approach now Christmas. And the reality is working households, let me emphasise, working households that cannot meet their bills. And today they wake to the news that in fact those bills will be increased again. I want to ask you not to offload this to some task force. What will you do as Taoiseach now to ensure that those bills can be met, that those bills are reduced, and that families can have an affordable life again? Deputy, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we did allocate up to 3.3 billion in energy credits. The bottom line is this. Universal energy credits on an ongoing basis simply is not fiscally sustainable. So the resources we have, we do actually have to target those resources, particularly to low-income families, which is what we have done. And you want everybody, with respect of income, forever and ever to be getting energy credits. You want the wealthiest in society to benefit from energy credits. You do, and that's what you have to do. Whereas I believe what we did with the fuel anons, what we've done with working family payments and so on like that, that is the proper way to proceed. And also you have to change the regulatory framework. And that is work. That's not simple work. It's work that's on the way, though. And that will ultimately help us to deal with this. But the bottom line is this. 18 billion is an enormous sum of money. Thank you, Tisha. And you haven't given any rational explanation. Now, we move to the Labour Party. We move to... ... ... ... ... ...