Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on this Bill and, perhaps, to try to improve it. My Sinn Féin colleague, Deputy O'Rourke, has proposed several amendments that would improve the Bill and make it more socially inclusive. These would include a liaison with MABS and provision that those who do not need this energy credit could ask their provider to direct that money to agencies dealing with people who are most risk of energy poverty. The financially vulnerable are an ever-increasing cohort of people because people find they are being hammered by costs at every turn. I am thinking of my constituents in north Kildare, who tell me they are considering living by candlelight, not because they are old romantics but because they are older pensioners who are terrified of their bills, including the standing charges eating into their funds before they even turn the light on. In this decade of commemorations is hard to believe that we have gone from electricity back to candlelight. Amendments making low-usage properties, whether vacant houses or holiday homes, exempt from this energy grant would go some way towards addressing the huge and growing gap between the extremely privileged and those barely getting by.

I note especially our proposed amendments on prepay metering, stipulating that at the request of the Minister an electricity supplier would have to credit prepay meters with an electricity cost emergency benefit payment in advance of the prescribed payment period. That is critical. Equally critical is that the suppliers would remove any arrears or limits placed on prepay meters until the Minister directs otherwise. Also of vital importance is the provision that an electricity supplier would not disconnect a household using a prepay meter during a moratorium on disconnections. I am very worried about people who self disconnect. The prepay meter issue is vital because these are already the people who are most financially vulnerable. Most are on prepay meters as a means of budgeting their income and their outgoings. They already pay a higher tariff than those of us on a regular meter. We could call it a poverty tax if we were to be honest but we would never be that crude or honest in this House. These people should not be punished for being poor.

I hope the Minister of State will take the amendments on board and look at them. These are matters that we have discussed at length at the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action. We have been talking about this non-stop for the past four or five weeks, and even before the war in Ukraine. We need to be clear about what this Bill is meant to do. It is meant to protect vulnerable energy users. It has to protect those who are at the greatest risk and those on low to medium incomes, who get up the earliest in the morning and work the hardest. These are front-line workers in health, retail, transport, schools and carers. They are the workers who keep the show on the road and to whom we have a duty to keep going when it comes to one of the most basic aspects of life and living, which is energy and heat, hot water, hot food and light.

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