Windfall Tax on the Excess Profits of Energy Companies: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-30
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Michael Collins (II), Cork South-West

There is no doubt that families are under serious pressure from energy costs. Electricity and gas bills remain far too high and hundreds of thousands of households are now in arrears. According to the CRU, over 500,000 energy accounts are in arrears. We now have around 200,000 children in this country living below the poverty line, with this figure rising to some 260,000 children when housing costs are taken into account. Barnardos is seeing families cutting back on food, heat and electricity. In a wealthy country like Ireland, that is simply unacceptable. Barnardos' own 2026 cost-of-living research found that one in five parents said that they or their children had to cut back on or had gone without food, while 36% of families surveyed had fallen into energy bill arrears at some point during the previous year.
We can talk all day about windfall profits, but there are disabled people in Ireland going without heat because they cannot afford the bill. According to the Disability Federation of Ireland, almost one in five disabled people went without heating at some point last year. Any money raised from the energy sector should prioritise those households that simply cannot reduce their energy use without damaging their health and quality of life. We in Independent Ireland have consistently argued that when energy companies make exceptional windfall profits during a crisis, those gains should be returned to the people struggling to pay their bills. Ireland has used a windfall contribution and a market revenue cap before, so there is merit in examining their reintroduction and directing the proceeds towards households.
We also cannot ignore the taxes imposed by the State itself. If the Government is serious about reducing energy costs, it must look at the carbon tax and fuel taxes as well. We are talking here about solar energy and that should be the way to go. A family relying on solar energy, however, would need to invest huge sums of money and the grants are scandalous. Paltry amounts are given here in solar grants compared with other European countries. The Government will have to concentrate on this aspect in the budget next week. It will be very interesting if that is the road the Government is going to take.
I was at the meeting last Sunday in Moate with thousands of others. We have to drop the carbon tax in relation to production and delivery. The question is where we will find the money. It is very easy for me to be over here saying drop everything. We should, though, put the tax on aviation. Most people do not need to fly, but they most certainly do have to go to school or work in the morning. One other issue to mention is the Barryroe oilfield. We should be out there drilling, supplying our own fuel and achieving our own energy security, and we are failing to do so.

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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