Windfall Tax on the Excess Profits of Energy Companies: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-30
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Liam Quaide (SD), Cork East

I commend my colleague, Deputy Whitmore, on this motion, as well as on her broader work on the cost of living and a just transition. One statistic in this motion should stop us in our tracks, namely, that 323,559 households were in electricity arrears at the end of June, which is one in every seven households. Prices are now climbing again. Wholesale electricity prices rose almost 77% in the year to August, including a 9.6% jump in August alone. People have been absorbing these increases for years. There comes a point where there simply is not another €20 or €30 to find. This pressure is also not evenly shared. The latest CSO figures show that people severely limited in their daily activities by a health problem were more than three times more likely to be unable to afford to keep their home adequately warm.
More than 17% of those households reported greater difficulty making ends meet. For many disabled people, higher energy use is far from discretionary. Extra heating and lighting can be part of the cost of disability. You cannot tell somebody who needs a warmer home because of disability or ill health simply to turn down the thermostat. There is also a clear climate and energy security argument, which is tied in with affordability in this motion. Ireland imported 78% of all the energy we used last year. Almost 93% of those imports were fossil fuels, including over 82% of our gas. When international gas markets go haywire, Irish households get hit. We saw it after Russia invaded Ukraine and we are seeing huge volatility again now. Reducing our dependence on imported fossil fuels is climate action but it is also a protection against the next energy price shock. We need far more indigenous renewable energy alongside the grid storage and interconnection needed to use it properly.
I am not suggesting that every euro of profit made by an energy company is illegitimate. ESB has an enormous programme of infrastructure investment ahead of it, which is essential to the transition. Windfall profits are different. The Government already accepted that principle. In 2023, it introduced a solidarity contribution on exceptional fossil fuel profits and a cap on the market revenues of certain electricity generators because soaring gas prices were creating gains completely out of line with normal market conditions. Those mechanisms are effective so it is difficult to explain to a family falling behind on their electricity bill why, when exceptional market conditions are again producing exceptional gains, Government should simply stand back and wait, particularly when the ESB reported €445.6 million in pre-tax profit for the first six months of this year, with its chief executive salary being increased to €410,000. This motion proposes using revenue from renewed windfall measures to provide a targeted €400 credit to households earning up to €70,000. That is immediate relief.
The longer-term answer has to be bigger than another credit every time international fossil fuel markets explode. We need an energy system that produces more of our own clean power, wastes less energy through poorly-insulated homes and leaves families far less exposed to the price of imported gas. That is climate policy, it is energy security and increasingly it is basic cost-of-living policy.

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Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-30