Thank you, a Cheann Comhairle. The Central Statistics Office, CSO, reported today that electricity prices have risen by over 18% since last October. At the same time, the International Energy Agency has warned of gas shortages across Europe due to the war in Iran if that issue is not resolved. We already have hundreds of thousands of people who are struggling to pay their electricity bills at the moment. There are 324,000 people and households in arrears on their electricity bills. That is 14% of the population. There is a crisis in this country when it comes to the cost of living and the cost of energy.

The Taoiseach's Government established the national energy task force to look at energy affordability and ascertain what can be done to help people. That was set up in June 2025, and we have seen nothing substantive from it. When will it produce its energy affordability action plan, and how high do gas and electricity prices have to get for the Taoiseach's Government to start treating this with some sense of urgency?

We are treating this with urgency. It is the biggest issue facing the world, never mind Ireland. It is the cause of enormous issues in terms of cost-of-living pressures. We are in difficulty because we depend too much on imported fossil fuels; that is a fundamental challenge for us. All across Europe, there are huge cost-of-living pressures on societies, families and households. In the budget, we were in a position to do more than most across Europe in endeavouring to alleviate the pressures on people through fuel allowance increases and the fuel income support schemes, which we have again extended from August to December 2026 for particular sectors of our economy, such as haulage and food production. There is also the exceptional aid for farmers in terms of fertiliser and energy costs, the deferral of certain aspects of carbon tax increases and the measures we took in the budget in social protection and carbon tax.