Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman. I want to go back a bit over old ground. We have had a discussion with Deputy Costello and Senator Boylan about the prepay and the protection of customers. I have just had a text from a prepay customer who tells me the standing charge for one of these prepay meters has gone up in the past couple of weeks from €1.20 a day to €1.50 a day. That might sound like the price of a cup of flat white coffee to some people, but over the course of a week it is more than a tenner. That is a lot for people who are vulnerable and poor because they must put money in the meter on a day-to-day basis. Will the CRU officials comment on that? Did they know about it? Was there an application put in to the CRU to ask if prices could be raised, or how does it work? It strikes me a 25% increase in the standing charge for our most vulnerable sections of the population is something that should have been brought to the commission's attention and something it should have been able to refuse, at least at the current time, because the overall costs of energy are soaring so much that this is an absolutely unfair burden on that section of the population.

A wider aspect that strikes me as this meeting goes on, and I listen to the answers to all the various questions, is that the discussion about well-designed markets being a real tool to deliver change around security, sustainability and price is very questionable when you look at soaring cost to ordinary people at the moment. That statement Ms MacEvilly has just made is very questionable.

It is also becoming more and more apparent the role of the CRU is to ensure the future is funded, as in the ability to move to 95% renewables. That is absolutely right and I totally agree with that. It is wonderful and all the rest of it. It is about ensuring the future of the private energy market is funded so it can connect to the national grid as it moves to delivering renewable energies. However, where are the criteria that demand those renewable energy companies must pay for all that facilitation by the population to prepare them to be able step into this market? I ask because I recently attended a seminar where a global expert on energy told us there is nowhere in the world, absolutely nowhere he said, where renewable energy is delivered by private companies without a huge cost to the state into which they deliver that energy. In other words, this idea of well-designed markets as a real tool to deliver change is absolute nonsense. We had a thing called the ESB here that, before it was deregulated, provided us with the cheapest electricity in Europe and turned on the lights everywhere up and down the country. As Ms MacEvilly said, markets are getting more and more complex. Why all this complexity? This is an essential service society needs for the wheels to turn, people to live, hospitals and schools to function and people to stay warm, yet it is becoming one of the most complex profitable sections of activity in this country. The regulator is failing to live up to its name unless it steps in and does something about this.