Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have an energy and security crisis because of gross mismanagement by successive Governments, particularly in the last decade. Principally, therefore, the responsibility lies with the Fine Gael party, it having been a continuing feature of Governments in that period. There has been gross mismanagement. This is a matter of energy supply and demand. Those Governments rolled out the red carpet for data centres, which have huge energy demand. At the same time, they Governments failed time and again to deliver on supply. Data centres have a role, but we must be able to power them.

There have been so many failures at different times, including policy failures and failures of action. This has led us to a situation where we have had more amber alerts in this calendar year than we have had in most of the previous decade. This has been a failure of successive Governments to plan, prepare, execute and deliver. It has also been a failure of agencies. The CRU has failed to deliver at several auctions. It is almost a case of trial and error with CRU. It tries to secure energy power plants and it fails. It tries again and fails again. Earlier this year, before the Dáil rose for the summer recess, the Government had to rewrite the rulebook in the EirGrid, Electricity and Turf (Amendment) Act 2022 because the CRU and other State agencies had failed to procure the necessary energy power plants to get us through last winter, this winter and the winters of 2023, 2024 and 2025.

This has implications for the price of energy. It puts an extra €40 on people's bills each year. The other thing the Government did in that legislation was to take so-called ring-fenced carbon tax revenues, intended to be used to retrofit poor people's homes, to spend them on buying diesel generators. It could not deliver gas generators, so now it is going to deliver diesel generators. This is the same CRU whose representatives told the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action yesterday that there was nothing the agency could do regarding standing charges and it would not even suggest that families be put on the lowest tariff. It is a case of kid gloves from the Minister, the Government and the agencies.

Another responsible agency is EirGrid. Its representatives presented at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action we had called to address this crisis and stated that a 9% increase in energy demand over the past five years was not excessive. Those were the words used. When we asked the CRU how a 9% increase in energy demand here compared with other countries, such as the EU 27, Switzerland and Norway, it indicated that the demand increase experienced in those countries in the past five years was 0%. Yet, it also stated that a 9% increase was not excessive, as we face into a winter of amber alerts, possible red alerts and a real increase in the risk of blackouts. This is no joke for families as they head into the winter.

The State has also failed to deliver alternatives, whether it be gas storage as a back-up or renewables. Regarding planning delays, wind energy groups have said there is supposed to be an 18-week turnaround time for decisions on planning applications but it is more like 60 weeks for planning appeals for strategic infrastructure developments. Just today, it was reported that we do not have a single port in the Twenty-six Counties that will be fit to facilitate the building of offshore wind facilities, yet we are supposed to be delivering 7 GW of offshore wind energy generation by 2030. It is not going to happen under this Government, and this is of deep concern.

It is the same with the energy security review, which has been long-awaited and was published earlier this week. It is a waste of money because it was very clear to anybody observing this area for any length of time that we needed to address the energy security crisis we have and that we needed gas storage. The Government needs to get on with this work, rather than dithering. The energy security review is a perfect example of that dithering. It has moved into a public consultation. The Government should get on with the work.

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