Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Perhaps following on from that point, Mr. O’Connor put it well there when he said that the rising cost of energy is going into the pocket of energy providers. This very accurately describes what is going on. Somebody is benefiting from these price rises and it is the fossil fuel companies and the energy providers. I wonder if any consideration has been given or has there been any discussion at all - I appreciate Mr O’Connor cannot veer too much into policy as this is the area for politicians, and so on - about trying to control the cost of these things essentially by levying, either at a national, European or international level, the profits of those who are doing well ? There is much international co-ordination going on these days, with unprecedented unity in the European Union when it comes to sanctions. Is there any thought on co-ordination when it comes to controlling the price or the profits, or both, of the fossil fuel companies and the energy providers?Might that be a way to address the problem rather than chasing the price increases by giving money to people but, essentially, that is just public money going to those fossil fuel or energy companies?

I noted the discussion earlier on about what legislative powers are available to the Government. I take the point that the Department of Finance and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform might not necessarily be familiar with that. To address the point raised by Deputy Lahart and to familiarise people with it, the power exists to control the price of goods in, I believe, sections 60 and 61 of the Consumer Protection Act, where in situations of emergency the Government is allowed to control maximum and unit prices of goods and services. Legislative power is there to do that and I wonder if any consideration has been given to doing that in the discussions as to how we might deal with these things, because it is worth saying the profits of energy companies have gone up considerably.

I will also be interested in hearing some comment because the profits of these energy companies went up long before the war in Ukraine and so have the prices. To my mind, Ukraine is obviously having an impact, but there were also increases in energy and fuel prices before the war in Ukraine. I would like to hear our guests comment on that and on why that was happening. The website bonkers.iehas in recent days done some work in this area and estimated that energy prices in Ireland are something like 25% higher than the average in Europe and are among the highest prices in Europe.

Four other countries in Europe have energy prices in the same high range as us. Why are we at the higher end? Twenty years ago, we had some of the lowest energy prices in Europe, before the deregulation and privatisation of ESB, Bord Gáis and so on but we now have some of the highest energy prices. Will the witnesses comment on that?

There is a narrative that, given the impact of Ukraine, fossil fuel supply and the cost of fossil fuels, we need to develop more renewable energy. We need to do that anyway for climate reasons. Is it correct to say that even if we develop much renewable energy, it will have no impact whatsoever on the market price or even on the security of supply? We have much more wind energy in this country than we used to, but it has not coincided with a reduction in electricity prices, even though we produce far more wind energy than we used to. It has coincided with an increase in energy prices because, no matter how much energy is produced, the international market sets the price. Energy production could be 100% renewable and it would not make any difference to the cost of electricity unless we publicly owned and controlled it and the prices. Is that correct? At the moment, all those prices are set by the market.

In their opening statement on the cost of living, the witnesses did not make much reference to the cost of housing and rent and what we will do about that. Will they comment on that? I am of the view that we need to bring in rent controls and to have maximum price ceilings on what can be charged, because every other measure seems to have failed. I do not believe there is any evidence that ramping up supply will lead to a reduction in rents or house prices, as the Government is saying. I do not know of any evidence in the history of this State of rents or house prices falling just because supply happened to be increasing. The opposite happened in the Celtic tiger period. Does the Department of Finance think, if we ramp up supply, that rents and house prices will fall at some point? If that is the thinking, where is the evidence for believing that might be the case? I do not see how it could happen and do not think there is any precedent for it happening.