Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I support the contribution of my Sinn Féin colleague, Deputy Mac Lochlainn, on the fishing industry and the treatment of our fishing families. It is absolutely scandalous. As he said, we are the laughing stock of the EU. Fishing communities all around this country are being destroyed. Fishing communities in my own county of Mayo are being decimated and the Government is standing by and watching this happen. It has to stop.

Yesterday, an electricity provider announced its fifth price increase of the year. Every household in the State has seen its electricity bill rise substantially. We must use every means possible to make electricity affordable and that includes lowering the VAT rates, as has been submitted by my party colleague and president, Deputy McDonald. Some of the escalating costs are caused by factors beyond our immediate control such as the global price of gas going up. Yesterday, BP posted quarterly profits of €3.3 billion. That is as opposed to €86 million last year. There are many people making a great deal of money on the backs of people who are really suffering from fuel poverty.

The real issue here is how the electricity markets operate. Under the current system the wholesale electricity price is set on a daily basis by the last power plant needed to meet the overall demand for power. The gas plants often set the prices in this system. This is unfair as it results in a cheap renewable energy being sold for the same price as the skyrocketing fossil fuel based-power. Our system is a model that has been pushed by the EU on member states for the past couple of decades. Sinn Féin has long opposed the liberalisation of the electricity market and, indeed, the proposition that it was a silver bullet to both promote renewable energy and deliver affordable electricity prices. It has failed on both counts. We have all this precisely because it prioritises the transition to renewable energy based on private market ownership and it removed the ability of the State to provide stable electricity prices to consumers. Now, with the price of gas skyrocketing, we are being hit by extortionate electricity prices.

Spain has led calls for a revamp of the wholesale power market in response to the price spike. Instead of engaging with the concerns of the Spanish, other member states and citizens here, the Government has joined with the minority to block any debate at the European Council. Why is this? Should we not thoroughly examine every option to make electricity affordable for hard-pressed households and families? Ahead of an emergency meeting of the energy ministers to discuss the recent price spike, Ireland and eight other member states released a joint statement that they would not support reform of the electricity markets, ending any discussion on reform that might help people through this winter. This is based on a dogmatic belief in market liberalisation and the idea that we should not interfere with the functioning of the market even if there is manipulation of supply. We need state-led transition, however, to green energy, not significant incentives to private energy providers to deliver renewable energy.

The Covid-19 pandemic has necessitated at least the temporary changing of state aid and fiscal rules and we need to look at something like this in respect of escalating electricity prices.

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