Households will see bills rise steeply
09:05, 19 Jul 2026Updated 09:11, 19 Jul 2026
Make the most of the sunshine and the warmth while we have it – it looks like a tough winter ahead for Irish households as a number of nasty price rises are on the cards.
It may be a while since you have turned on the boiler or filled up the home heating tank, but with Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again war with Iran flaring up yet again, and international trade and energy markets about to take another hit, opposition parties are already warning of a Cost of Living hit i n the October budget.
Back to School costs may be one thing – and the Government has just updated the list of families who are eligible for a social welfare lump sum payment to help with that. But the ‘big bills’ – petrol, disel, home heating and energy and food – are all set to increase from October onwards.
Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris has already admitted that the inflation rate for 2026 could be higher than predicted, running at 3.75% or even 4.5% – effectively adding thousands to average household bills for the year.
The main factor is energy-price rises – including for home heating oil – which has surged in cost by more than 80% in the past year.
And home-heating fuels will definitely cost more from October as the carbon tax on home-heating oil, gas, and solid fuels – which should have gone up in May – will finally be introduced.
That will add around €18 to the average household’s gas bill, an extra €22 to a 1,000-litre fill of home-heating oil and 90c to a 40kg bag of coal.
This will be on top of already huge increases, mostly due to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the US-Israeli war on Iran. At the start of March, the cost of 1,000 litres of home-heating oil was below €1,000. In April, it had nearly doubled to c. €1,800.
Petrol and diesl is expected to be back above €2 a litre by October. In April, in response to protests and surging fuel prices, th Government lowered the excise duty by €0.32 on a litre of diesel and €0.27 on a litre of petrol.
From September, these moves will be reversed, in four stages that will see the price at forecourts go above €2 a litre and possibly up to around €2.10, depending on how Donald Trump’s war against Iran goes.
There is due to be another carbon tax hike – 2.5 cent on a litre of diesel and 2.1 cent on petrol – in October’s budget.