Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I just want to put one question to the St. Vincent de Paul. I have a bugbear about smart meters in that until people sign up to a plan, they do not get the information in a timely way. They should be able to access their own information on energy usage in real time. There also needs to be some sort of help for people to interpret the data. I know some people who are absolute energy nerds. They sign up for a plan, they see all of their usage and they understand the ways in which they can shift their usage to avail of better tariffs, including time-of-day tariffs. However, that is not within everyone's competence. It certainly scrambles my brain. I know I should get my head around it and work harder on when I put the dryer on and so forth but there is an opportunity to do more here. I acknowledge that this is not tackling the root causes of energy poverty and I am not saying that we should not talk about all of the things our guests have been talking about like social tariffs, fuel allowance and so on but is there some sort of pathway whereby we can use smart meter data and help to interpret that for individual customers to make sure their usage matches the best available plan for them? Can we get very simple information out to people that doing certain energy-intensive activities at a different time will cost them a lot less because of the plan they are on? There is probably a capacity issue here too, from the perspective of the St. Vincent de Paul. Is anybody doing any work in that space to help people to understand how to maximise their spend, particularly on electricity?