Energy and Fuel Costs: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-29 ============================================================ Joe Flaherty (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach I welcome the Brennans as well. I thought it was the Brennan brothers who were coming in to do the place up and take over from the OPW. They would probably do a better job. I am delighted Fine Gael has put this motion forward because if they put this motion forward, that means the Tánaiste is not out telling everybody what will be in the budget. I hope he will give them a chance to speak about it today. We have to be very careful in our language and in what we say to people. In the build-up to the budget, I have been struck by the amount of narrative from the Minister for Finance. People are uneasy and uncertain. There are people in this country who cannot get by from one week to the next. They are literally scraping by, surviving on 50 cent or €1, and are on WhatsApp trying to get a son or a daughter to send them a couple of euro to get them through to the next payday or the next payment of social welfare support. That is deeply unfair. We live in a kind of balloon in this building. We are very insulated. We do not understand the scale of the poverty that remains in this country. Senior Ministers and political leaders in particular are largely insulated from that. Their language is very important, particularly when we are speaking about whether the increase for pensioners is going to be €10 or €7.50. Most senior politicians would not see €2.50 as making much of a difference but, for a 70-year-old man living on his own who drinks three pints a day to combat social isolation, to get out and meet someone or to save putting on the heat in his house, that €2.50 is an awful lot of money. One of the most disturbing things about this budget has been the race to get out there with news or soundbites. The Tánaiste went to the ploughing and came out with the three Fs: fuel, feed and fodder. It was particularly alarming that he did not know that the three Fs were actually fixed, flexible and future, the principles of cost, as any accountant would tell you. If you are doing the budget for one of the most progressive and successful countries in Europe, that is really what you should be focusing on. Aside from that, this is a very important budget for the Government. It is a collective Government and both parties are in it. I will put my hand up and say that the last budget did not reflect the ethos and values we have as a Government and as a caring society that values all people. We reined in supports that we had provided previously and we did so too quickly. We were not there for people when they needed us most. I hope that we have learned a lesson from that. We faced a public backlash for it. I hope we will see the result of that lesson in this budget. It needs to be a budget that emphasises care, empathy and, above all else, the support that underpins and defines the Fianna Fáil Party. We have been there since the foundation of the State. We have been through many a crisis but we have always been there to help and support people. It is now more important than ever that we do that. I would certainly support a windfall tax. I was particularly disappointed when we provided the energy credits. We gave a huge amount of money to energy companies and got no commitments from them in return. We probably improved the enterprise value of every one of those companies by several percentage points by giving them that large amount of money and bringing down their credit base, and we got nothing in return. We did not get a commitment from any of them that they would not increase their profits or anything. We should rain fire on them with a windfall charge. They did the country no service in what they did after getting that money. They more or less gave two fingers to this House and to society in general. I would certainly welcome a charge. I would also like to see a hospitality tax introduced in the budget. It is very important for tourism in Ireland. It is important for rural Ireland. I was in Dublin at the weekend and nearly everybody there was from either America or Canada. I do not think Dublin needs to benefit from a windfall tax. That money needs to be ring-fenced and needs to go back into the promotion of tourism across the rest of the country. The likes of Longford and Leitrim need to be able to retain that tax locally and to use it to develop tourism in the locality. Just like the local property tax is used to benefit other counties in the country, this new tax, when it is brought in, cannot benefit Dublin, Cork and the other big cities. It needs to go where tourism is struggling, where we do not have small hotels because we allowed them to be used to take in refugees. We need to build our tourism base back up. The Americans I spoke to at the weekend spoke about the dearth of accommodation on the west coast, saying that they found it incredibly hard and that they could only stay for one night because the accommodation simply was not there. We need to address that. We have a very nuanced hospitality offering in this country. You either go to the big cities or you do not go anywhere. In a similar way, the hospitality providers only want to invest in Dublin. They do not want to invest in new hotels in any other part of Ireland. Renewable energy is very important. It is great to see progress on that. I spoke in the House earlier today about a frightening scenario. There is now the prospect of the largest ever wind farm in Ireland. This is being brought in by stealth through three separate planning applications, which cover over 800 acres between them. It is bigger than the current largest wind farm we have, which is in Meath. It is only marginally smaller than the largest wind farm in Great Britain. If a wind farm is proposed in Ireland that is almost on the same scale as the largest wind farm in England, something has got completely out of control. The largest wind farm in Ireland - the one in Meath - is on the market for €250 million and is likely to be bought by an overseas investment company. In all likelihood, the combined worth of the assets of the three solar farms and the wind energy facility being promoted by Bord na Móna on 4,600 acres, if they all get planning, will be in the region of €1.5 billion. These projects will account for 6,000 acres of land in Longford. It is inevitable that these will be sold in the future. Right across the country, we are engendering, promoting and encouraging the wholesale and rampant development of alternative energy with absolutely no checks or boundaries. We have reached the point at which, as a Government and as a society, we need to say "Stop". The next generation will potentially be faced with the prospect of selling off 6,000 acres in County Longford. That is a step too far. --- 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/seanad/2026-09-29/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-29