{"id":369042,"date":"2026-03-05T10:35:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T10:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/369042\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T10:35:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T10:35:09","slug":"home-heating-oil-and-petrol-price-gougers-combust-like-rocket-fuel-for-the-dail-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/369042\/","title":{"rendered":"Home heating oil and petrol price gougers combust like rocket fuel for the D\u00e1il \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The issue of blatant price gouging on petrol and home heating oil<\/a> is rocket fuel for the D\u00e1il<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Opposition TDs love and loathe price Gougers. <\/p>\n

Who doesn\u2019t loathe those heartless, shameless, money-hungry gannets? <\/p>\n

And what isn\u2019t to love about an open-door chance to castigate the Government for not cracking down on the Gougers while standing in solidarity with an outraged electorate? <\/p>\n

No votes lost either way.<\/p>\n

As soon as the US<\/a> and Israel<\/a> attacked Iran<\/a> last weekend, a hike in oil prices was on the cards.<\/p>\n

When the dogs of war are unleashed, the commodity market rats escape with them.<\/p>\n

Their instant opportunism and outrageous profiteering at the pumps this week has been astonishing. <\/p>\n

Consumers hoping to beat the increase by filling up now from existing stocks got a rude awakening as prices soared straight away.<\/p>\n

When the D\u00e1il returned this week, householders and motorists were already reeling from the eye-watering costs. At any other time, this would have been the main issue for debate, but it paled against the grim reality of a gung-ho Donald Trump<\/a>, egged on by an equally bellicose but considerably smarter Binyamin Netanyahu<\/a>, invading Iran.<\/p>\n

Party leaders voiced concern about the rapidly spiralling fuel costs, but with the president of the United States illegally starting a conflict in the Middle East and the Taoiseach due to meet him shortly in the Oval Office, they stuck mainly to the war.<\/p>\n

\"MartinMartin speaking in the D\u00e1il last month. Photograph: Oireachtas tv <\/p>\n

When the opportunistic price scalping was mentioned \u2013 it\u2019s been the lead item on RT\u00c9\u2019s Liveline all week, Miche\u00e1l Martin was rather vague about it. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of the energy situation there is a degree of price-gouging going on, it would appear from anecdotal accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n

But not to worry, as his Government will \u201ckeep an urgent review on the situation as it unfolds\u201d.<\/p>\n

The anecdotal accounts will be piling up for the Taoiseach when he is away on his foreign travels \u2013 not just from angry consumers letting off steam on the radio but from his own backbenchers cornered by irate constituents struggling to put petrol in their cars or home heating oil in their tanks. <\/p>\n

But Opposition leaders won\u2019t be able to corner him for a while as the D\u00e1il is adjourned next week for St Patrick\u2019s Day, which, naturally, is the following week. <\/p>\n

Business resumes on Wednesday, March 18th, which should be allow adequate time (five sitting days) to prepare for the Easter recess.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Heating oil prices increase by more than 50 per cent in Ireland in less than a weekOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The D\u00e1il will rise on March 26th and return on April 14th. All the Ministers who went rogue while out on the annual St Patrick\u2019s Day missions should have been rounded up and flown home by then.<\/p>\n

So there was a lot to cram in on the fuel gougers\u2019 front on Wednesday because the Taoiseach won\u2019t be around to talk about it for a while. <\/p>\n

Liveline was still leading with the story on Wednesday when the D\u00e1il got to grips with it.<\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s Mary Lou McDonald got the ball rolling with the story of an elderly woman facing an \u201cextortionate\u201d increase in her heating bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis morning, I was contacted by a 94-year-old woman from Wexford who relies on home heating oil to keep her house warm. Only last week, the price for a half fill of oil from her provider was \u20ac464. By midday today, that had jumped to \u20ac879,\u201d said Mary Lou at commencement of Leaders\u2019 Question at, er, midday. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is blatant price gouging and greed,\u201d she told the Taoiseach. \u201cIt\u2019s a brazen rip-off happening in plain sight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Ivana Bacik wasn\u2019t going to be bested by Mary Lou\u2019s morning and midday missives from a 94-year-old woman in Wexford<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Speaking of heating, she accused Miche\u00e1l of being \u201centirely passive\u201d on the subject. He should be on the phone to the top brass in the oil companies telling them to stop fleecing people.<\/p>\n

Will he do that?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of uncertainty out there at the moment and no one should be taking advantage,\u201d replied the Taoiseach, confusing the ballooning oil prices with the delicate matter of his forthcoming visit to president Trump.<\/p>\n

Personally speaking.<\/p>\n

Then, as rampant gougerism broke out all over the country, he moved to reassure an anxious nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are keeping everything under review.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mary Lou was confounded. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn the name of God, how many reviews are you going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

Miche\u00e1l was confounded too. <\/p>\n

\u201cTypically\u201d after this kind of global event \u2013 Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, for instance \u2013 \u201cit should be three to fours weeks\u201d before the gouging starts in the retail forecourts. <\/p>\n

Ivana Bacik wasn\u2019t going to be bested by Mary Lou\u2019s morning and midday missives from a 94-year-old woman in Wexford. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne woman who emailed me to raise her concerns had to revise her email before she hit \u2018send\u2019\u201d reported the Labour leader. \u201cShe said they had put up the price again in the time it had taken her to type the message to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ivana wanted real action, not promises of reviews from a \u201cbystander Government\u201d that \u201cjust shrugs\u201d when \u201cprice gouging, pure and simple\u201d is going on.<\/p>\n

Her comment must have stung, because Miche\u00e1l came back with a very pithy, decisive and encouraging reply.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will keep everything under review in terms of how this situation unfolds \u2013 and we do appreciate the pressures that are on people and again, the Competition and Consumer authority is there to investigate and engage with companies and the market fundamentally to make sure that price-gouging does not happen and that unfair advantage is not taken of people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will also continue to engage on that issue also as a Government, and we will have further meetings today relating to that specific item.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has also instructed the Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke to send the Gougers a strongly worded letter. <\/p>\n

Later in the afternoon, at meeting of the finance committee, T\u00e1naiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris agreed with Labour\u2019s Ged Nash when he declared that \u201cthere\u2019s a place in hell\u201d for people who are hiking up energy costs on the back of a war in the Middle East. <\/p>\n

When it comes to addressing the knock-on effects here, he said the Government is keeping everything \u201cunder review\u201d. <\/p>\n

Word also came through that Burke has summoned fuel company bosses for a meeting on Friday to explain themselves and their prematurely rocketing retail prices in light of existing wholesale supplies. <\/p>\n

It might be a good idea for him to consult his buddy and fellow Westmeath man, Michael O\u2019Leary. The Ryanair boss launched Peter\u2019s general election campaign in 2024. <\/p>\n

He should be able to give him a tip or two on how to deal with fuel suppliers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The issue of blatant price gouging on petrol and home heating oil is rocket fuel for the D\u00e1il.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[6222,79,4767,356,18,35808,19,18929,17,71,9170,16594,1843,5765,55915,4772,1181,47,85396,384],"class_list":{"0":"post-369042","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-binyamin-netanyahu","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-dail-eireann","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-energy-costs","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-iran","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-israel","18":"tag-ivana-bacik","19":"tag-mary-lou-mcdonald","20":"tag-michael-oleary","21":"tag-micheal-martin","22":"tag-miriam-lord","23":"tag-peter-burke","24":"tag-rte","25":"tag-sinn-fein","26":"tag-st-patricks-day","27":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}