Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I move:

"That Dáil Éireann: agrees that:

— privatisation and marketisation of the energy system has failed;

— it has led to exorbitant household heating and electricity costs, averaging €4,300 a year, unprecedented levels of energy poverty, carbon emissions that are among the highest and fastest growing in the European Union, and dependence on imported fossil fuels for 70 per cent of our energy use;

— it has failed to enable a just transition to renewable energy, or to reduce energy use, and is inherently incapable of doing so;

— the Government's policy of encouraging the construction of energy-guzzling data centres, which have accounted for 70 per cent of the increase in metered electricity usage since 2015 and now swallow up 16.5 per cent of total electricity demand, more than all rural homes in the country, has worsened the energy crisis and brought us to the brink of blackouts this winter;

— the failure of successive Governments to invest in free, green, frequent, and fast public transport has produced near-universal car dependency, forced car ownership, crippling annual costs of €10,600 per car, high carbon emissions and unhealthy levels of urban air pollution;

— the Government's Climate Action Plan 2021 target of almost one million electric vehicles on our roads by 2030, and any amended plan that relies on massively increasing the number of private electric vehicles, is undesirable, unsustainable and unachievable;

— the Government's emissions reductions targets under the Climate Action Plan 2021 are woefully inadequate across all sectors and very unlikely to be met;

— privatisation and a lack of long-term democratic planning of energy needs have led to the looming threat of amber alerts and blackouts this winter; and

— the only sustainable way to reverse this situation and provide cheap, green energy for all is to move to a fully electrified energy system based on 100 per cent renewable energy, combined with planned reductions in energy usage; and

resolves to:

— re-integrate the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) Group and restore its non-profit mandate across its generation, network and supply operations and immediately impose price caps on all private energy companies, including pre-pay, district and communal heating operators, at a level that reduces energy prices to below pre-crisis levels and eliminates profits as a precursor to nationalisation;

— transform the Commission for Regulation of Utilities to a people's power agency with a mandate not to promote competition but to ensure the delivery of affordable electricity for all households, including those on pre-pay, district and communal heating schemes, a reduction in energy usage across the economy, and a transition to 100 per cent renewable energy;

— recognise renewable power as a natural resource to be developed publicly, and legislate that all future major renewable power projects must be developed by the ESB Group in the public interest, as wind, solar, tidal and all other sources of renewable energy are natural resources which should be developed in the public interest, not subject to private profiteering; and

— move without delay to nationalise the energy system, enabling the provision of affordable energy to all on a non-profit basis and democratic planning of the State investment needed for a rapid transition to a 100 per cent renewable, zero carbon energy system, based on environmentally-sustainable publicly owned onshore and offshore wind, solar and thermal energy; and

— draw up a realistic, ambitious plan to significantly reduce energy usage across electricity, heating and transport, to include:

— a ban on the construction of any additional data centres and the connection of any more data centres to gas networks or the national grid, in particular the eight hyper scale centres planned in the next two years;

— the establishment of a State construction company to directly retrofit all housing in the State that needs it, beginning with rapid free attic insulation for all who need it, the installation of energy and cost efficient heat pumps in all suitable housing, and roll-out the construction of at least 20,000 zero emissions public homes a year; and — investing in free, green, frequent and fast public transport to dramatically reduce household transport costs and car dependency, tackle air pollution and cut carbon emissions.

I wish to share time with Deputy Boyd Barrett. I am happy to move People Before Profit's motion on the nationalisation of the energy sector. We are facing a double crisis. On the one hand, we have an immense cost-of-living crisis with people facing soaring fuel costs, electricity costs and food and housing costs. One-in-two families is facing into this winter in a situation of energy poverty. We find that only a few weeks before Christmas, energy poverty has rocketed to an unprecedented 40% of households in the State and despite all the fanfare of the budget, the inadequate one-off measures were nowhere near enough. On the other hand, we have the ecological crises of both climate and biodiversity breakdown. One looks at the floods in Pakistan, the droughts in China, the heat waves that we experienced in the United States and in Europe over the course of the summer. One looks at the hundreds of thousands of people facing imminent death through starvation as a consequence of climate change in the Horn of Africa and one looks at the dismal failure of the conference of the parties, COP, once again. The window to achieve a liveable future for humanity continues to rapidly close. Both of those crises are two sides of the same coin. That coin is a system of ecocidal capitalism which is driven by profit at all cost without regard for the human misery of people being unable to afford to heat their homes or to feed their families and without regard to the impact they are having on the planet that we all have to live on and attempt to have a sustainable life on.

Immense profits are being made. Let us be under no illusion about that. Obviously, the biggest profits are taking place at an international level in the major fossil fuel corporations. One can compare the profits that the big oil and gas companies made in quarter 2 of this year compared to quarter 2 of last year. They have exploded. Shell's profits were $11.5 billion in the second quarter of this year versus $5 billion in the same quarter of last year. Exxon Mobile's profits were $18 billion in one quarter of this year - four times what it got previously. Last year, Chevron's profits, at $10 billion, saw a tripling. Massive profits are being made by the oil and gas giants on an international level.

That profiteering is also taking place in this country. In the first six months of this year, the ESB made a profit of a €390 million. Bord Gáis Energy recorded a 74% rise in profits in the first half of this year, to €39.5 million. Its parent company, Centrica, which also owns British Gas in the UK, made operating profits of £1.3 billion in the second quarter, mostly from its oil and gas-drilling division. SSE Airtricity's parent company, SSE's pre-tax profits rose 44% in the year to March to £3.5 billion.

Only three multimillionaires control the Irish pre-pay energy market and are allowed by the Government to rip-off some of the most deprived people in the State. Mr. Ulric Kenny and Mr. Andrew Collins are on the Irish rich list and own PrepayPower, while Pinergy, which has only announced yet another round of price increases, is owned by the multibillionaire, Mr. Peter Coates, with a personal wealth of more than £8 billion. I could go on and on about the immense profiteering.

Yesterday, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, said that he cannot foresee any significant reduction in household gas or electricity bills for the next year or two. What incredible news to give people before Christmas. We cannot accept as a society that people will be left in these horrendous positions of having to choose between heating or eating, and some dying as a consequence, as we see in the figures for excess deaths in winter in this country. We should act now.

We were the first, more than a year ago, to bring forward a motion in the Dáil to say that the Government should use the powers that it has to bring in price controls on energy. The Government has that power. It can do it with two strokes of a pen under the consumer protection legislation. That must happen, but we are also making the point that, by itself, will be inadequate. If one leaves control of the energy market in the private system, introducing price controls will only be achievable on the basis of writing a blank cheque to the private energy companies, as, for example, the Tories did. One cannot control what one does not own. Therefore, we need to bring the energy sector into public ownership and run it on the basis of people's needs as opposed to profit.

The reason for that is clear in terms of the cost-of-living crisis but also in relation to the climate crisis. We have made progress towards being carbon neutral at a snail's pace. Over the past 20 years, a grand total of seven offshore wind turbines have been developed. Some 87% of our total energy use continues to come from fossil fuels - 70% of it from imported fossil fuels. Despite all the talk, Ireland's emissions continue to rise. It is time to change that script.

Almost 100 years ago, when the country was far poorer than it is today and the State was still in its infancy, it established the ESB, a publicly-owned not-for-profit company that electrified the whole State and provided low-cost affordable electricity to millions. That situation continued until the so-called "liberalisation" of the energy market in the 1990s and 2000s. It was very simple. The ESB provided everyone with low-cost electricity. It had a non-profit mandate. It was actually barred by law from making profits in order to keep prices low for households and prices remained among the lowest in Europe for decades.

That process of liberalisation, in reality, privatisation, which was an international process of neoliberalism, was a disaster everywhere. Everywhere it led to profits for a series of very rich corporations and individuals, decline in terms of workers' rights and conditions, significant increases and soaring prices. We went from some of the cheapest prices in Europe to some of the most expensive prices and a noticeable slowness to invest in renewable energy because the for-profit companies simply did not want to take the risk.

It is time to re-nationalise our energy system. The idea is gaining ground internationally as the only way to address the climate and cost-of-living crisis and make the essential changes that we need. It means operating the energy sector as a not-for-profit public utility under the democratic control of workers and communities. It means driving the electrification of all aspects of the economy, a just transition to 100% renewable energy and reductions in energy usage.

To get to zero emissions, we need to electrify everything using cheap renewable energy. This is simply not going to happen if we continue to rely on private companies to do it, no matter how many incentives and price increases they get.

What we propose regarding how the nationalisation of the energy system will take place involves five steps. First, the ESB Group should be reintegrated and operated on a not-for-profit mandate. Under the current legislation, the ESB is not allowed to use the profits it makes from generation to subsidise the price. It should be brought back into being one integrated entity. It should be reinstated with a not-for-profit mandate, with the addition of a mandate to deliver a rapid programme of electrification of all possible sectors of the economy, a rapid and just transition to renewable energy and low-cost electricity for households. Electric Ireland offering affordable electricity on a not-for-profit basis will encourage customers to leave the much more expensive private electricity supply companies. All workers in those companies should be guaranteed quality, green jobs within the ESB Group.

Second, we should nationalise the major private electricity generators. Electricity generation is too important to be left in private hands. These companies should be nationalised and integrated into the ESB Group, including the Corrib gas field. The Government already has the power to do this under the Fuels (Control of Supplies) Acts 1971 and 1982. There must be no question of compensating the private energy companies and their millionaire owners who have engaged in rampant profiteering and destruction of the environment. Non-renewable generation should be shut down as soon as possible on the basis of energy reductions and the development of renewables.

Third, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, should be transformed into a people's power energy organisation, with a mandate not to promote competition but to ensure the delivery of affordable electricity. Fourth, there needs to be a reduction in energy use throughout the economy by prioritising people's needs over corporate profits. Let us reject this drive for more and more data centres and instead invest in public transport and the retrofitting of people's homes.

Fifth, it should be recognised that renewable power is a natural resource. It is a natural resource for this country and it should only be developed publicly. We need to get on the streets on Saturday, join the Cost-of-Living-Coalition, CLC, protest at 1 p.m., and fight for a left government, and not just any left government but one which will actually take on these issues by committing to nationalising the energy sector.

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