Dáil debates

Thursday, 31 March 2022

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions

 

12:10 pm

Photo of Eamon RyanEamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We are going to have to do a whole variety of additional measures. What we have done so far is not going to be enough. We are going to need to do more. On the ESB, people must remember it is a public company. In the past year it was able to hold back on some of the increases it had in its cost of gas because it hedged much of it into the future. Those hedging positions are coming to an end, which is why some of those prices are coming through now as well as the historic further increases that have happened recently.

How do we do it? I also met last week with the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities, CRU. I asked it to come up with further ways we can help protect our people, something it was doing anyway, because we all agree this is an existential crisis. I would not rule anything out and welcome ideas, suggestions or proposals that would particularly help those most vulnerable. We have taken measures that are universal like the €200 credit going in next week. It was correct to do that because sometimes it is very hard to target who exactly is in the greatest difficulty. Further measures should be looking at market mechanisms and further efficiency measures and not just at Government always signing every cheque. It is about looking for ways we can change the market. A way I have mentioned before in the House, because it could be really effective, is to give time-of-day pricing and mandating it so that people have to opt out from it. This would be a way for people to be able to save further through the pricing mechanism. It is just one example. We will come forward in the coming weeks with a number of other measures such as that to try to help address this real crisis we have. The real challenge is we do not know how long it is going to last for. We do not know how long this war is going to last for. We must think in a timely way as to how we do this so it works over a period of time that is potentially protracted.

Lastly, on what real things we are doing, the Deputy mentioned the waiting list for the warmer homes scheme. I stand up and absolutely believe investment in retrofitting and making homes efficient is the best approach because it is targeted at those on lower incomes. On the 7,000 houses that built up as a backlog during Covid when we could not go into people's houses, in the major retrofitting scheme we announced three or four weeks ago as part of our response, we said clearing those and getting them done first is important. That is not insignificant for those 7,000 houses and more will follow afterwards as we scale this up and ramp it up. That is the best way of protecting people. There are some market mechanisms we look at like, as the Deputy mentioned, looking at tariffs or how at the fuel allowance works. With those sorts of measures, to my mind, we work with the Department of Finance in a budgetary process to get it exactly right. There will be a range of other measures we are looking at and that we expect to finalise within the coming weeks as part of our overall response.

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