Windfall Tax on the Excess Profits of Energy Companies: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-30
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Rose Conway-Walsh (SF), Mayo

Tá an geimhreadh ag teacht. The winter is coming. I thank the Social Democrats for bringing forward this important motion. Behind every statistic we discuss here today are real people and real families. Week in, week out, across Mayo, I meet older people, people with disabilities, people with chronic illnesses and families who are genuinely afraid to use electricity or to put the heating on. People who have worked hard all their lives, paid their taxes and contributed to their communities are now watching the meter and worrying about every unit of electricity they use. This Government says that this budget will be a budget for workers. What about the workers who come home in the evening and cannot afford to use energy in their homes or to turn on their heating? Some of these people will sit cold in their own homes because they are terrified of the bill coming through the door. This is taking place on the Minister of State and the Government's watch. In one of the richest economies in the world, with a budget surplus of €10 billion, this is utterly shameful.
Ireland has some of the highest household electricity prices in the EU. Record numbers of households are in arrears with their electricity bills while private energy companies make millions and billions in profits. That includes the Corrib gas project in my own area. The ESB, which we must remember is majority State-owned, recently reported €377 million in profits after tax for the first half of this year. That is up more than 20% on last year. Its CEO is being handed a pay increase of €90,000 for a job well done. Think about the contrast and how we treat the profits being made not because of extra work being done but because of the geopolitical situation. On the one side, there is hundreds of millions in profits and on the other side are pensioners who are afraid to turn on the heating.
The Government tells us that the international markets are to blame and that its hands are tied but it can act. It has a duty and a responsibility to act. This is about political choices. It is about putting ordinary hard-working people first. The Government should introduce a windfall tax on excess profits, reintroduce the energy credits and reform the energy market. It is very simple. The money raised should all go directly to these struggling households and to reducing bills, tackling arrears, supporting retrofitting and protecting people who are experiencing poverty, including energy poverty and food poverty. Nobody in Mayo or anywhere else should be freezing in their homes while extraordinary profits are being made from an energy crisis. When the Minister of State pushes through the amendment to this motion, I want her to think about the pensioners and the families she is turning her back on. It is not right. The solution is there. The Government needs to act now.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-30