I begin by cautiously welcoming the short-term reprieve brought about by the Government's decision to reduce excise duty temporarily; to cut the NORA levy, a measure to which this legislation gives effect; and to take on board one of the Labour Party's proposals, which was to extend the fuel allowance by four weeks. The Labour Party voted in support of the introduction of these measures last night and we will support today's legislation as well as it is going some way to ease the financial pressure on working people across the country but, of course, we believe that more can and must be done. We have seen a huge degree of uncertainty and anxiety as fuel prices skyrocketed following Trump and Netanyahu's illegal and bloody misadventure in Iran began, particularly among vulnerable households that rely on liquid fuels to keep their homes warm and those who need to drive to work. This crisis has left no one untouched. In every part of the country, ordinary households are feeling the pressure of rising energy costs in an immediate and seemingly relentless way. All of us in this House will have heard from our constituents over the last number of weeks about the effect this is having on them, about how anxiety-inducing a trip to the petrol station has become and about how heating bills feel like a looming threat. For so many households, the cost of getting to work or bringing the kids to school has now become a financial calculation. We are talking about the lived experiences of working people, older people and families who are struggling to hold things together in the midst of what the International Energy Agency has described as the “gravest energy shock of all time”, and that is on top of our existing cost-of-living crisis. I sincerely hope that the measures announced yesterday by the Government provide some relief to people who are really feeling the pain in this energy crisis but we should not kid ourselves into thinking that these measures are anything more than sticking plasters. They are short-term and limited and they do not provide anyone with any real certainty. The energy market is so volatile at present - determined, it would seem, by whichever side of the bed Donald Trump wakes up on - that any benefit arising out of the temporary reduction in excise duty and the small cut to the NORA levy could be wiped out by the end of the week or even sooner. The reality is that the measures the Government has introduced do not go far enough. They will not provide much reassurance to households and commuters, only a temporary reprieve that is vulnerable to further price increases. What happens if this war rages on beyond May and energy costs continue to pile pressure upon consumers? These new measures are not a long-term strategy to protect households and they certainly are not about building a more secure future in our energy systems. They are a short-term instrument that the Government has belatedly brought in to get people off their back. As I have said, we support the individual measures, but the overall package is, in the words of my colleague, Deputy Nash, "timid, anaemic and underwhelming". The Government could and should have gone further to support households and commuters in the short to medium term. The Labour Party has long championed strengthening our remote and flexible working legislation, and that is now more important than ever in the context of the diesel and petrol price crisis. During recent yellow weather warnings, workers were encouraged to work from home where possible. The same logic and support must be provided to workers at this critical time. Remote work is no longer only a workers' rights or quality-of-life issue; it is a real and effective way to protect many people from this present energy crisis. The Government must urgently reconsider its position on the Labour Party's Work Life Balance (Right to Remote Work) Bill 2026. It must institute a genuine right to remote and flexible working, not the tepid right-to-request model that we have at present. In effect, that has been a licence for employers to refuse requests. It should be obvious to the Government that by reducing people's need to travel to and from their workplace, it is shielding them from the sky-high prices we are seeing at the garage forecourts. The Minister does not even have to take our word for it. The International Energy Authority has explicitly said that people should be encouraged to work from home so that the cost of commuting is mitigated. This is a no-brainer - something that can bring relief to many workers without a direct cost to the State - and I have not heard any justification for not doing it. There are other measures that could be taken in the short term to protect people against prices at the pumps. We should be looking at implementing an emergency reduction in public transport fares by at least 10% and identifying all opportunities to increase the capacity and frequency of services. More broadly, this crisis has exposed the fundamental issue in our transport system - our over-reliance on private car use. That is something that we desperately need to change. I acknowledge improvements that were made over the course of the previous Government, particularly with regard to the roll-out of Local Link buses. We need to double-down on that progress. It has been disheartening to see any momentum that had built up during the previous Government in terms of our commitment to public transport expansion being squandered by this Government. The 2:1 spending ratio in favour of public transport and active travel has been done away with. The national development plan, NDP, review's sectoral investment plan for transport was a damp squib that pushed back the start dates of vital transport projects. The reality is that too many people in Ireland remain dependent on their cars because they have no viable alternative. Public transport is simply not good enough in many parts of the country. Services are infrequent, routes are limited and reliability is often lacking. While we can take short-term measures to try to reduce the cost of public transport and encourage people to leave the car at home to avoid increasing fuel costs, the bigger picture is that we need to reduce the need for expensive car journeys in the first place. That is the longer-term solution to high costs at the pump but it means investing in a public transport system that is affordable, reliable and accessible. It means expanding bus services, increasing rail capacity and ensuring that rural communities are not left behind. It means creating a network that people can depend on in their daily lives. It means going further in terms of our active travel network. Cycling is the cheapest, healthiest, cleanest and often most efficient way of getting around. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle may have seen a piece by RTÉ yesterday in which they timed three people making a journey from Knocklyon, in my own constituency of Dublin South-West, into town - one driving, one taking a bus and one cycling. Those of us who make that journey into work in the city centre every day will not have been surprised by the finding that cycling is the fastest option. That said, and notwithstanding the significant improvements that have been made in recent years, the cycle network along that route remains a patchwork, for instance where the incredible Dodder greenway ends at the Rathfarnham Road as you head into town and you are abruptly spat back out onto the road alongside cars. As the RTÉ presenter said, it does not pass the test of whether you would allow your child to cycle on that route. It is a real safety concern, and it is the sort of thing that discourages more people from leaving the car at home and getting them or their families on their bikes. People should not feel like they are taking their life into their hands when they decide to cycle to work. Returning to my main point, I hope this fuel crisis will serve as further evidence for this Government of the pitfalls of a transport system built primarily around private car use, not only for climate and health reasons, or to deal with the chronic traffic issues and congestion around our cities, but also for how vulnerable it leaves people when petrol and diesel prices shoot up. There will always be a need for private cars, of course, but when people are forced to rely exclusively on cars it leaves them exposed to fuel shocks like the one we are experiencing at present. The solution has to be further and urgent investment in public transport and active travel expansion, improved bus services in our rural communities, light rail for cities such as Cork and Galway and the DART+ projects. I am delighted to see that the MetroLink for Dublin's north side is progressing, but we want to see its expansion out to Dublin South-West and elsewhere as well. We need a well-connected active travel network across our major cities and between towns and villages in rural Ireland. We need to see a renewed commitment, a real vigour, from this Government to get these vital transport projects over the line sooner rather than later. As I said in the Chamber last week, this crisis must also serve as a reminder to the Government of the urgent need to wean ourselves off imported fossil fuels. Our economy remains far too reliant on them. We are 20 years behind where we could have been in terms of offshore wind generation. We have a wealth of renewable potential off our coasts that is almost entirely untapped. We have literally one offshore wind farm, in Arklow, built more than two decades ago, and it is no longer generating any energy. I have serious questions about our target of 5 GW of offshore generation by 2030, given the pace of developments so far. It is clearly not going to happen. I was left baffled in many ways by the Taoiseach's performance during Leaders' Questions yesterday. He said at one stage that Ireland is a "renewables success story". While I acknowledge we have made some good progress in terms of onshore generation, I do not see how failing to utilise our greatest asset, which is our offshore potential, can be characterised as a success story. It is not a success to be so far behind in our transition to clean renewable energy that the Taoiseach's predecessor once called our country a "climate laggard", and he was right. In any case, any new renewable energy that we are generating is not going towards decarbonising important sectors of our economy; it is being gobbled up by the huge energy demands of data centres. Essentially what we are seeing is the good work that we are doing in terms of renewables benefiting not ordinary households or small businesses, but faceless multinationals. That is not a success story; it is an outrage, and it is only going to get worse with the continued data centre proliferation that is being enabled by this Government without putting the necessary safeguards in place. The Government's large energy user action plan has utterly failed in that regard and the proposed private wires law will only further the expansion of data centres and their continued expansion and use of fossil fuel generation. I acknowledge that data centres have a role in our economy and our society in terms of enabling our access to modern technologies, but we have to be honest: they are huge sources of pollution and they are placing an unbelievable strain on our energy grid. Alongside soaking up all of our renewable energy, it is anticipated that they will account for more than 30% of our total energy consumption within the next couple of years. Even the former finance Minister, Pascal Donohoe, has warned in his new role of the huge water consumption issues that data centres bring and the dangers for countries that go along with that. I was left further baffled yesterday when the Taoiseach continued to insist on the Government's plans to import liquified natural gas, LNG, a highly polluting fossil fuel, for energy security purposes, given that he later acknowledged that every energy crisis since the 1970s has been due to a crisis in fossil fuels arising out of a conflict. I appreciate the Taoiseach’s acknowledgement that the source of market volatility, and the reason people are currently being fleeced, is the crises in oil and gas, but I cannot fathom how anyone would think the solution to ensuring energy security in future is further entrenching fossil fuels in our system through the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure. This Government should seriously reconsider its plans for its strategic gas reserve. We need a new energy security analysis in light of this most recent crisis. This was recommended by the Joint Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy in its pre-legislative scrutiny report on the Government’s LNG bill. The European benchmark price for LNG soared by as much as 60% in the days following the start of Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal war in Iran, following the shut-down of a major LNG facility in Qatar. The Government has estimated that its proposed LNG terminal will cost almost €1 billion, paid for of course by ordinary bill payers. The likely increase in that cost arising out of conflicts like the one we are seeing at present underscores the irresponsibility of going ahead with this proposal. We simply cannot secure our energy supply by further exposing ourselves to price shocks like this. We are already vulnerable to an increasingly unstable geopolitical arena, and ordinary households and commuters are paying the price. Charging ahead with the introduction of even more fossil fuels to Ireland will only make matters worse. As I said previously, the solution to our energy security needs lies off our coast. Government inertia in building up our offshore capacity can no longer be tolerated. The urgency we have seen from the Government in rushing through the legislation for this LNG terminal needs to be redirected towards meeting our 5 GW offshore target and getting the projects currently in the pipeline delivered. I want to touch briefly on the issue of price gouging. The case for an investigation by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, is clear. Within hours of this war beginning, we saw prices soar for home heating oil and at the petrol pump despite the fact that, as we know, fuel stocks are bought well in advance. The fuels being supplied in the hours immediately after the outbreak of the conflict would have been bought at a much lower rate, but they were being sold based on the present wholesale price. The fuel providers - never ones to waste a crisis - saw an opportunity and went for it. It was frankly insulting to hear Fuels for Ireland, the industry lobby group, tell consumers the other day not to expect a reduction in their fuel costs immediately following the cuts to excise duty and the NORA levy. Its excuse was that the fuels being sold would have been purchased in advance at a higher rate. I would be willing to accept that argument if it did not imply that for some reason, fuels bought in advance of these cuts cannot be charged at a lower rate, but the fuels bought prior to the outbreak of the war had to be charged based on the wholesale price at the time consumers were filling up their cars. It is absolutely outrageous. I welcome the instruction given by the Minister for enterprise to the CCPC to conduct a review of the retail energy market. On many occasions in this House, I have called out the poor behaviour of energy companies and the dysfunction of our supposedly competitive market. However, it must go further than a simple review. The Minister must instruct the CCPC to conduct a stand-alone investigation into potential price gouging in the hours after this latest conflict in the Middle East began, and the failure to immediately pass on any cuts in excise duty. I will conclude by cautiously welcoming this legislation, which will temporarily reduce the excise duty, cut the NORA levy and extend the fuel allowance, but the Government could and should have gone further. We know we cannot tax-cut our way out of our over-reliance on fossil fuels and our overexposure to the whims of a warmongering US President. We need to look ahead towards real solutions to shield ourselves from future oil shocks to the greatest extent possible, and that means building up our renewables capacity.

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