Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this. Families are facing an unprecedented challenge this winter to meet their electricity bills. Undoubtedly, international affairs will contribute and are contributing to that crisis but there are factors under our control.

Sinn Féin supports this proposal to provide households with an energy credit, which will help to offset some of the costs households face this winter. However, we have also called for a windfall tax to be introduced on the excessive profits of energy suppliers. We cannot just wait to see what the European Union does. We are a Legislature and we need to act now. Without the introduction of a windfall tax this Government is simply writing a blank cheque to these large energy suppliers. As called for by Sinn Féin and as implemented in other EU countries, energy price caps would also give certainty to householders over the winter period, when they have their highest usage of electricity.

Sinn Féin will also be submitting amendments to remove the arrears limit on prepay meters and to prohibit disconnections for households with prepay meters for that period. Roughly 340,000 households use prepay meters and they are often charged a higher unit rate for electricity. I want the Minister of State to hear the following point. It is generally lower income households that use prepay meters. I know a lot of these people in that cohort, as will the Minister of State. The reason they have them is they cannot deal with bills every two months. They pay by the week and it is important that we protect them. We need to ensure that all households receive the €600 energy credit. This includes those living in mobile home parks and apartments that have shared meters with just one MPRN. This is important. In my constituency a number of people are resident in a mobile home park, some of them elderly. The owner of the park has an MPRN but the households, the people living permanently in these mobile homes, do not. They are caught in a situation where they simply have no way out and they need to be helped.

In the medium to long term we need to address our energy security. Sinn Féin has consistently called for more direct involvement in energy provision by the ESB, Bord na Móna and Coillte. Why do we call for that? We do so because the State owns them. Each of these are semi-State bodies that are well-established with deep roots in our communities. We should be looking to build up their capacity so as to increase supply and security. We cannot be left subject to a whim at the end of a pipeline, hoping someone else does not turn it off. We should also be able to get a clawback on the dividend from their profits. After all the difficulties it has gone through, this year Bord na Móna paid a dividend to the State on its profits from last year. It has returned to profit, from a company that was nearly closed, which shows the power of the semi-State bodies. Those companies have huge potential and I am asking the Minister of State, as the Minister of State with responsibility for this, to take that on board. We should also be building up our biogas and biomass industries. We have the resources; we just need the political will. Sinn Féin wants to see long-term solutions to the energy crisis and that means becoming more self-sufficient so that we are not at the mercy of international affairs or price-gouging private energy companies.

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