Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will be sharing time with Deputy Paul Murphy. People are facing additional costs to heat their homes. The estimates vary but €800 over the year is a reasonable estimate by bonkers.ie. Against that background, €100 is pathetic and insulting. It is a drop in the ocean and will not cut it. It is good the Government seems to be acknowledging that more needs to be done, as others have said. We made the point during the debate on the budget that a €5 increase and failure to expand eligibility for the fuel allowance were just not good enough.

When the scheme was first announced towards the end of the year, we were very clear in saying it was pathetic and was not enough. The Government did not understand that people were literally choosing between food and heating their homes, or between paying the rent and heating their homes. People are being hammered in every direction. A payment of €100 against that background is utterly pathetic and insulting. The Government will need to do much more now.

The one piece of advice I strongly urge the Government not to take is the shocking suggestion that came from Deputy Cowen a few moments ago. How wrong can somebody be? Deputy Cowen must be out of his mind to suggest the answer to the current spiral in energy costs is to privatise the ESB. That is the last thing we need to do. In fact, the decision to move the ESB away from being a not-for-profit entity to being essentially a commercial entity, even though it is publicly owned, was the beginning of the onward and relentless drive upwards in the cost of electricity and energy. Privatisation is the problem. The commodification of energy supply and distribution has been a total disaster.

This is the key point we need to make. Some people present inflation or a rising cost of living as if it is like the weather and it is just that the weather has changed. We need to take measures, maybe short-term measures or maybe slightly longer-term measures, to deal with change in the weather. Inflation is not a change in the weather. Inflation is one group of people robbing another group of people. We really need to get that into our heads. The ESB last year made €363 million in operating profit and that was low compared with the previous year when it made €616 million in operating profits and paid out €81 million in dividends. When the pockets of working people are looted with shocking increases in the price of electricity or gas or heating oil, somebody else is making money.

That is true on a global scale and it is true domestically in this country. Shell is crowing about its quarterly profits. Shell's quarterly global sales, mostly of gas, were €6.4 billion, a dramatic increase. It pointed out that 2020 was a bit of a tough year for it, but it is all over now and it is enjoying a bonanza. In just three months it has made €6.4 billion. Those who buy shares in Shell, as I am sure plenty of rich people in this country do, or those who have shares in any of these privatised energy companies, including some of the ones that will or are producing wind energy, are doing fine.

People who are private or public tenants have absolutely no control whatsoever over the level of insulation in their homes and, as a result, the amount of energy they need to heat them. Many social housing or private tenants are screwed and crucified. A disproportionate number of the hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers or people in receipt of disability or other social welfare benefits are being absolutely crucified just to keep themselves warm. On top of that, they have to pay rent. All of that is going into somebody else's pocket.

The decision to cut back supplies globally during Covid was done to keep up profits. It is as simple as that. It was not done based on people's energy needs, but rather to maintain profits and so that companies could keep paying dividends to people who can afford to put their extra wealth into buying shares in large corporations. That is the reality of the situation. Inflation is not caused by weather or a natural phenomenon; rather, it is one group of people using a crisis to loot the pockets of the people who can least afford it.

Our starting point has to be that recognition, and that then dictates what sort of short- and long-term measures the Government takes. In the short term, we need to control the price of energy, electricity and heating. We need to introduce price caps, just as in order to control the spiralling cost of rent we need to introduce rent controls. Anything less will not cut it. If we leave it to the market, these people will continue to ensure their profits are high, whether from energy and electricity or the rents and wealth they generate. We need controls so that the basic things that people need to survive are affordable for ordinary people. Anything less is not good enough.

Nobody else in the House seems to want to talk about this stuff. We have pointed out that under the Consumer Protection Act, the Government has the power to declare an emergency regarding the cost of energy and impose maximum unit price costs. Why will the Government not do that? My God, the Government was pouring billions into large corporations to keep them propped up during Covid, but it seems we cannot introduce the same kind of emergency measures to control the price of energy and electricity in companies that, I repeat, are making lots of profit and could well absorb that. That is what should happen, in particular when those companies are publicly owned.

My God, the Government should not make a bad situation worse and pour fuel on the fire – sorry for the pun – by privatising these entities and drive them further in the direction of profit rather than ensuring that we provide for the energy needs of people in this country. God Almighty, it is absolutely shameful. I have never been a fan of Fianna Fáil, but at least at one point it constructed Ardnacrusha, established the ESB and so on and created an energy company-----

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