Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

Yesterday evening I told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Natural Resources and Agriculture that I was in the process of bringing to the Government a memorandum on an affordable energy strategy. For some months, very active work has been done by the Department and the Departments of Social Protection and the Environment, Community and Local Government on the question of affordable energy and fuel poverty. I expect to be in a position to make this public this month.

With regard to the question of advocacy by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul on switching, Deputy Murphy is correct that the national figures show 43% of customers switch. However, for the segment which benefits from the home benefits package the figure is approximately 16%. This is one of the matters about which I am speaking to my colleague, the Minister for Social Protection, with regard to the systems in her Department as they relate to the energy companies and the capacity to remove any barriers to allow this category of the population to switch with equal facility as those not in receipt of State aids.

However, I must make a point on arrears. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and similar organisations such as MABS, make representations to us to state we ought to address this issue because a significant amount of debt-hopping takes place. Somebody runs up a bill for six to nine months and, as bills are sent out every two months, before anybody catches up with them they switch to another supplier and repeat the performance before switching again. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul wants us to address this issue and I have been in discussions with the Commission for Energy Regulation about it. Moves have been made whereby now a flag is put up and arrears must be declared to a new supplier. However, a new supplier is not blocked from taking on the customer until the arrears are cleared.

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