Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We will speak in that order. I am first of course. I welcome the temporary respite these three tranches will give people. They are not tranches of €200, but €187 in three bundles. The way I describe them is as temporary life-saving devices for people who are drowning in debt. The underlying problem has still not gone away. These grants will help to cushion up to 20% of the price hikes people face, but that means they will still have to shoulder 80% of the massive hikes.

I reject the idea that this is caused solely by the war in Ukraine any more than the impact of Covid cannot be blamed on one bat in Wuhan. The pandemic impacted and played out so badly for us across a social and health system riven by inequality. The dysfunctional health service and years of creeping privatisation worsened the outcomes of the pandemic. Similarly, the war in Ukraine is not the sole cause of the massive energy and fuel hikes. The crisis has simply laid bare the dysfunctional market system and the gross, obscene profiteering by the fossil fuel industry that goes on in ordinary circumstances.

As a member of the Green Party, I am sure the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, will not disagree with me, or with António Guterres, who stated:

The combined profits of the largest energy companies in the first quarter of this year are close to $100 billion. This grotesque greed of the fossil fuel industry and their financiers is punishing the poorest and most vulnerable people, while destroying our [planet].

The Minister of State should hold on to that thought because I want to come back to it when we drill down into what is happening in this country. It is incredible that months into the crisis, we have a situation where generators of wind and solar energy, or indeed those who profiteer from Corrib or North Sea gas, can rake in massive profits because of fluctuations in gas prices across the world. This shows that the market in energy is not only totally inefficient, but it gives us a system determined by the profit needs of large corporations. It exposes as utter nonsense the pretence that we have choice and that we can shop around, get the best tariffs, change provider and use smart meters to get the best deal. It is all a way of pretending that markets and competition deliver something they do not, which is cheap prices and efficiencies.

Up to 1991 we had a company, the ESB, that was fully owned and had a not-for-profit mandate. When we went to deregulate, the most efficient and cheapest energy company in Europe ended up in this present sorry mess. That is a story that could be echoed across other elements of services in this society such as health, broadband and housing provision where market mechanisms have been exposed for what they are: a shameless grab of public goods and services for private profit.

The notion of industry being in private hands must be reversed and we have to move beyond the liberal dogma that insists we cannot assert public control over key services. That is why People Before Profit will introduce a Bill to bring in measures to renationalise the energy industry, which will do over the coming weeks and months.

Turning to the Bill, we will seek to introduce an amendment on Committee Stage to deal with one of the most egregious side effects of the deregulation of energy here, namely, the growth in prepay meter use. This is why I asked the Minister of State earlier to hold the thought. Prepay meter use is often presented as a measure to help people exert personal control over energy use but, in reality, it is a direct effect of private, for-profit companies seeking to shore up and increase their profit streams. In the prepay energy market in Ireland, the three big players are owned by multimillionaires. While I will not use their names here because I will be told to shut up, the net worth of one of them in the top company is €65 million. He hits the rich list every year. Shareholders in one of the prepay power companies received a €16 million windfall following an internal restructuring. The profits for 2020, before the war on Ukraine, had risen by 27% to €14.2 million in one of those companies. Our amendment will try to help the Government deal with what it has not been able to do, namely, to show us how it can say, whether it is the Minister for Justice, the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste, that no one will be cut off this winter. We are going to show the Government how it can do that by tabling an amendment to the Bill, which I hope it will not be reckless and reject. There are up to 400,000 customers on prepay meters and the bluff of Ministers in the past two weeks has not given any guarantee they will be able to prevent people from cutting themselves off simply because they cannot afford it. Moreover, it is bizarre that seven months after the first scheme, we still cannot guarantee, although perhaps the Minister of State can answer this, that those from the Travelling community who do not have a MPRN will not be cut off. It beggars belief that we have not learned this lesson.

As COP27 approaches, it is worth pointing out that this crisis, and the misery it has inflicted on people in terms of energy processes, is not only highlighting the failure of the State to protect people during the energy crisis but also showing a greater failure of the market in dealing with and addressing the climate crisis. Last year, big corporations, namely, Shell and Equinor, withdrew from major offshore wind energy projects in Irish waters, while their cheerleaders complained and blamed the planning system and the State's failure to give these companies everything that they ask for. This again highlights that if we are to address the climate crisis, just like the energy crisis, we have to do it by State-run, not-for-profit means.

If we had insisted that a bizarre market system like that which we now have be used to electrify this country in 1927, there is every chance large parts of Ireland would be still in the dark. If we are to address the climate and wider energy crisis, it means reversing those neoliberal policies of the 1990s that brought us to this sorry position. It is instructive to look back at the debates in this House in 1927 - my parliamentary assistant did some of this work - when the same ideological arguments were trotted out. The danger to the State was the idea that there would be a publicly owned, not-for-profit energy market. It was labelled as Bolshevism and Deputies were warned about creeping communism. Oddly enough, I want to quote the Minister who introduced the Bill and set up the ESB. He was no Bolshevik; rather, he was a member of Cumann na nGaedheal. The then Minister, Patrick McGilligan, explained that the State could not deliver the energy revolution it needed if it was to leave that to for-profit companies. He stated that “the dangers of handing over to anybody operating for gain such services as [energy], with all the attendant circumstances, were so great that it simply could not be attempted.” That was a Cumann na nGaedheal Minister in 1927. I echo what he said, and it is very odd for me to do that. Leaving such a key sector to those companies, which seek to gain massive profits from the disaster, poverty and misery of ordinary people in this energy crisis, would be an even worse disaster than that which faced us in 1927 because it also doubles and triples up with the climate crisis we face.

I look forward to the debate on the Bill and to the Minister of State accepting, I hope, the amendment People Before Profit will put forward on Committee Stage to ensure that users of prepay meters will not fall through the cracks. Moreover, when we one day attempt to reverse the damage done in the 1990s and to renationalise the energy sector, I hope the Green Party will fully support us.

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