Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy mentioned the European Union in terms of the energy security meeting and the windfall tax. We are committed to a windfall tax. The Energy Council last week agreed an approach to a windfall tax and a solidarity tax from fossil fuel producers and a windfall tax from wind generation. The Deputy referenced the ESB. We own the ESB. The State owns the ESB so the facility is there for the State to take a bigger dividend from the ESB in respect of any windfall profits that are made on the back of the crisis. Not all of its profits were on the back of the crisis.

Some had to do with financialisation products and so forth. We want the ESB to continue to invest in renewables also.

We do not believe in giving energy companies a blank cheque, which the Deputy's party does. The Deputy's party has a view that we should just give a blank cheque to the energy companies. We believe in giving supports to the consumers, not to the energy companies. We want to support the customers and reduce their bills and, at the same time, use the windfall tax and the solidarity payment to help the overall taxpayer in terms of meeting the needs of households, protecting jobs and businesses and so on, which is important.

Deputy Bacik raised the matter of caps. There are two issues. The European approach to caps is different from the Sinn Féin Party's view or the United Kingdom Government's view, in that some - not all - are looking at wholesale caps. What happened in Portugal and Spain had unintended consequences for energy security and supply. France ended up buying a lot of it because it cost less. This is a very complex market and we have to be extremely careful. We have a particular supply line from the UK and Norway, which is important in terms of energy security. I do not believe in any arbitrary cap that would undermine that security of supply. Having spoken to people in Europe - we had a meeting yesterday ahead of the meeting we are having later this week in Prague - the European Commission will in all likelihood be tasked with seeing if it can come up with a realistic set of proposals, which will be difficult to do for 27 member states because everyone is in a different situation. The idea that you could have a uniform mechanism is a bit unrealistic. For example, Hungary, Bulgaria and other countries have particular dependencies.

Deputy Cathal Crowe raised the issue of the Green Atlantic wind farm and the whole area of the west of Ireland. I think I dealt with this issue. We would be prepared to support courses and programmes in third level in the region.

Deputy Barry asked for whom the economic recovery was. It was for the 400,000 workers who were unemployed when this Government came into office and who are now working. That is fundamentally what the economic recovery is about.

In terms of prepay, there are mechanisms that the Government, with the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, is taking to try to alleviate the pressures in that area to make sure that people are not cut off or nothing untoward happens.

Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan raised the matter of the tax warehousing facility and supports for businesses. We are concentrating in the initial phase on the temporary business aid scheme. This is in line with the European Union's temporary aid crisis framework. We do not envision the full panoply of schemes that we used for Covid-19, but we are going to keep the situation under review. We have to see how this scheme works in terms of uptake and at what level of sufficiency is reached. We are limited at the moment in terms of the temporary crisis framework that Europe deploys. Europe itself is reviewing that.

I think that covers everyone.

See this speech in context