Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers has ruled out any further temporary once-off supports for households in the next budget despite Government officials warning that new supports may be needed to pay high energy bills.
The Irish Times reported that senior officials in the Department of Climate and Energy briefed new Minister for Energy Darragh O’Brien in January that bills remain 90 per cent higher for gas and more than 60 per cent higher for electricity compared with pre-energy crisis prices.
The Minister was advised that new supports will be needed for some households.
However, in a series of media interviews on Thursday, Mr Chambers repeated the policy stance of the Coalition that once-off payments which have been an annual feature in budgets since the Covid-19 pandemic would be discontinued.
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Responding to the departmental briefing, Mr Chambers said the Government would not be changing from its policy position.
“We have been very clear that Budget 2026 needs to be set within the fiscal parameters, which were set out in the medium-term fiscal position for the Irish State,” Mr Chambers said in an interview on Newstalk.
“That means if there’s any decision taken, social protection, supporting households and businesses, it won’t be done in a temporary once-off context.
“It has to fit within the budgetary parameters which we’re setting out.
“The Government has been very clear since we’ve entered office that we want to move away from the position of once-off measures and ad hoc measures and make sure that we set good sustainability in the decisions that we make,” he added.
Separately, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe has said energy credits issued to householders over the last two years cannot “become the norm”, adding that support measures would have to be “targeted”.
Speaking in the Dáil, he said the payments were made available at a time when “inflation was 5,10, 15 per cent. Those payments were made across a work which is very different from today.”
Mr Donohoe added that if “we begin to normalise it” and make it available every year, that “runs the risk of creating difficulty for our economy in the years ahead”.
The Minister told Sinn Féin health spokesman David Cullinane that in the budgetary process later this year, “we will look at what measures we can put in place that will be targeted, that can offer support to those who need it the most”.
He recognised “the great challenge and worry that exists” but “we can’t and won’t do anything that adds to the risk that we may face”.
During Dáil Leaders’ Questions, Mr Cullinane said people are struggling with ongoing price rises and the briefing document to Government “shows that the energy rip off is going to continue for five more years that workers and families will continue to face increased electricity and gas prices every single year”.
He added that Ireland had the second highest energy prices in the EU. “It means that, on average, people are paying a whopping €1,779 a year for electricity and €1,503 a year for gas.
“Is it any wonder that families in Ireland are being forced into energy poverty? We have hundreds of thousands of families in arrears. How alert are people supposed to afford the increases that are coming down at the tracks?
Calling on the Government to “step up to the plate”, he urged the Minister to “continue to provide support for people who to meet their energy bills”.
Mr Donohoe pointed to the targeted measures in the budgetary process but hit out at Sinn Féin, saying they were the only Opposition party that “managed to go into an election at a time prices were high and lose votes”.
This was “because the people of Ireland knew that the economic policies that you were bringing forward were not credible. If you promise everything you were for nothing.”
