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

I am sharing time.

I often feel as though I am in an echo chamber here, particularly on this issue. In 2019, at a meeting of the all-party Joint Committee on Climate Action, we passed a motion committing the Government to conducting a review of energy poverty throughout the population. As the Society of St. Vincent de Paul research that is mentioned in the motion before us shows, energy poverty is much greater and deeper than what is accepted by the Department of Social Protection and the Government. Only last month, People Before Profit tabled a similar motion on the energy crisis, putting a very different emphasis on its cause and proposing remedies to address that cause. We support, therefore, the call on the Government to take action to deal with the impact of the energy crisis, the low level of Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, grants that are available to the poorest of people, the number of households that do not qualify based on income tests or health tests for those grants and the exclusion of many from fuel allowance. We support all the calls in the motion to extend that.

Uniquely, however, the Rural Independent Group has managed to identify the completely wrong cause of the crisis and suggested a remedy for the underlying issues that shows utter contempt for attempts to address the climate crisis and for the concerns many millions of people, in both urban and rural settings, have about it. The energy crisis and the hikes have nothing to do with the ban on fossil fuel and gas exploration. It would not matter if every team of Shell and BP were combing the Irish seas looking for that gas and oil. Nor would it matter if they brought that gas and oil on shore. It would not have any effect on the stability of prices of fuels for the Irish household because it would be privately owned and sold on the open market, like all other fuels. Past governments ensured we the people would never benefit from any exploration of gas and oil, and to say at this stage that it is wrong to ban the exploration of gas or oil is utter climate denial.

In the context of its Deputies' comments on home-made gas, does the Rural Independent Group support using fracked gas? Does it support fracking gas on shore or the idea that we would return to fracking gas on land? The Deputies' constituents might like to know whether that is what they are saying. The energy market here was deregulated, in a neo-liberal policy supported by many of the Deputies pushing this motion, and the inevitable outcome was the Government would not intervene in the energy market. We have now gone from having one of the lowest prices for electricity to the consumer in Europe to having one of the highest, because of deregulation and neo-liberal competition. Nevertheless, the most immediate threat to our lights staying on this winter is not the lack of oil and gas exploration. Regardless of what the Deputies claim, it is the unbridled proliferation of data centres, in a policy cheerled, again, by some of the Deputies supporting the motion because it appeases the multinationals and whatever wish list they have or demands they want to make on the State, even if that means power cuts for ordinary people.

We support the reversal of carbon tax on ordinary people but we want hefty taxes on the profits of those who pollute the planet. We cannot support the motion for these reasons that cut to the heart of where the crisis lies, namely, in the market, as we are denying people the right to access fuel when they need it and pushing up prices for ordinary people, a matter at the heart of the climate crisis. There are good aspects in the motion but there is really reactionary stuff as well, so we will not support it.

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