Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Electricity Costs (Domestic Electricity Accounts) Emergency Measures Bill is basically a Government initiative to soften the blow of rising energy prices. However it is framed, it entails a once-off payment of €100 to every domestic electricity supply in the country. It is not being means-tested, as the Minister of State outlined, being too onerous for the Department to consider. As well as being paid to domestically occupied houses, the proposal is to pay it to vacant holiday homes also. One presumes the consumption of electricity will be very reduced with no occupancy. It also will be paid to the electricity account holder, which raises obvious questions in tenancy arrangements where the landlord is receiving the rebate. The Minister of State said he is hoping to engage with the Residential Tenancies Board. As I am sure he is aware, there are already significant difficulties in that sector. I do not know how that is going to work.

The Minister of State's proposal has no relationship to the energy efficiency rating of a house or to the year of a house's construction, which might point to some properties with superior energy efficiency, and therefore allow some reduction in State payment. That shows how the Bill has been rushed in the first place. Within the legislation, it appears that the measures are to provide one month's help to families or individuals who actually incur 12 months of annual energy and electricity bills. Who is most affected by rising energy costs? Certainly, low-income families, single-income families and those in substandard accommodation who are paying to heat it. Others affected include those on fixed payment means, particularly pensioners who are on fixed pensions from many years ago, the elderly and those who require constant home heating, such as those who are infirm, those with potential illness and those on blood-thinning medications who always will feel cold and require the central heating to be on all the time.

In the legislation, did the Minister of State consider the rebate position of those who are on a pay-as-you-go electricity meter? Many of these customers are already paying a higher tariff, as the Minister of State is aware, because they are pay through a meter in the first instance and second,, because they are often paying back a previous electricity bill. How are they to receive their rebate? What is the basis of this energy cost inflation? Is it Covid, supply chain interruptions, Russian tanks amassing, OPEC oil rationing, megaphone politicking threatening gas supplies to Europe or is it the re-emergence of global energy demand? These are all parts of the problem. In Ireland, have we also contributed to this domestic energy crisis? Could our decision to dispense with any more offshore gas development without considering viable alternatives be a factor? Could our decision to reduce coal and peat-burning electricity generation, again without viable alternatives, also be a factor? When we placed a carbon levy on fossil fuels, did we think that nobody in the population would notice that an increase in the cost of consumption and the cost of living would plainly follow? Did we think that when we applied additional costs to the existing costs of production that they would not be seen on every utility bill and every shopping centre receipt in the country within weeks? Was the Economics 101 lesson missed by everyone in the Minister's Department framing climate and energy policy? I believe, as I am sure members of my Regional Group do, that this single proposed initiative will not be enough to protect the most vulnerable in our society. More will need to be done to support these families in the coming months, and especially during those months when fuel consumption is high.

This situation also gives rise to a wider debate about the nature of Ireland’s developing national energy and climate policy. We are talking about wind and solar power generation, but where is it? The Maritime Area Regulatory Authority is two years away from being set up yet. We need that agency to be able to control the development of our maritime space. How long will it be before Ireland becomes a net exporter of renewable electricity or even of hydrogen fuel? Equally, how long will it be before we fit and retrofit homes to a high energy standard and allow domestic generation of electricity through wind turbines and solar arrays? I ask because we are far from that situation yet. How long do we intend to remain completely dependent on the supply of international energy, when billions of euro worth of potential energy capacity are sitting off our shores in untapped gas and wind energy resources? We seem to be strategically unable to develop these resources. Instead, we are asking foreign conglomerates to come into this country to buy the rights and, to quote the Disney movie, to then charge us to infinity and beyond for the pleasure of consuming our own resources.

We in the Regional Group tabled a motion on wind energy some months ago which was accepted by the House. Some of the measures contained therein point to the potential existing in solar, gas and wind energy generation in this country. The generation of sustainable offshore wind energy would potentially lead to an investment of more than €100 billion in our economy. The time has come for us to get serious about climate change. We have done the talking and we have decided to get the population on board by telling them that we are charging them for what we are consuming. What we are not doing, and what we are absolutely failing to undertake now, is to institute real and meaningful policy and undertake change to generate and expedite the infrastructural development required in this regard. When we look at what is going on in Portugal, Spain, Germany and Denmark, how can we be so far behind? What is the delay in getting all these policies rolled out?

I cannot say that I welcome this Bill, because the nature of the need it seeks to address is unwelcome. As already stated, we will have to do more to protect vulnerable families. I wait to hear what policies are going to be rolled out in that regard. Most importantly, the only way we can prevent future disruption to our energy supplies is to have our own sources. That means we must develop our own resources and we must get about it now.

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