Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Social Democrats and Deputy Whitmore for tabling the motion, which we are very happy to support. The main reason we have a cost-of-living crisis is profiteering and privatisation. That is what needs to be addressed. People Before Profit first tabled a motion in the House in October 2021 calling for the introduction of price caps on energy, gas, oil and electricity. We have been calling for approximately a year and a half for the introduction of a windfall tax on the energy companies that are making obscene profits while real human beings suffer. The Government has done nothing except throw a few totally inadequate crumbs back at people in electricity credits and fuel allowance increases that do not go anywhere near dealing with the enormous hike in energy costs and the cost-of-living crisis that people are suffering. Hundreds of thousands of people are in arrears. If the Barnardos survey is even close to accurate - and I think it is and all the evidence suggests it is, despite the Taoiseach’s attempts to put question marks over it - there are hundreds of thousands of people who are now dependent on food banks such is the level of hardship they are suffering.

We need to remind ourselves what is at stake for ordinary individuals. I raised the case this week in a slightly different context because some people are being hit in multiple directions by the cost-of-living crisis. This was a couple in their late 50s where the husband used to work but then he was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. As a result, he can no longer work and his wife cannot work because she has to look after her husband. They had a HAP arrangement while he was still working so they have to pay a massive top-up on top of the inadequate HAP payments that they receive to cover the rent on the place that they live. As a result they are in significant arrears on their rent and energy bills, neither of which they have any prospect of paying because they are on basic social welfare payments. They go for an exceptional needs payment and they get a fraction of what is necessary to cover their rent arrears, which will just build and build, and the arrears on their energy bills. What are they supposed to do? This is somebody who is sick and his carer, but there are no answers because the Government will not deal with the fundamental problem, which is profiteering. The scale of the profiteering is absolutely obscene. The five biggest oil and gas companies in the western world saw their excess profits jump to €134 billion. This is extraordinary profiteering by these companies on the back of the misery of families like that or another family I brought up this week. This is a couple where the wife has cancer and has been on illness benefit but does not even get the fuel allowance. The husband cannot turn down the heating because she is sick so their bills are building up but they are not entitled to the fuel allowance because they are on what is called a short-term payment even though she has been on it for several years and has cancer. This is the suffering that people are enduring as a result of the gross profiteering, which is matched here in Ireland with the extraordinary profits being enjoyed by the ESB whose profits surged to €390 million in the first six months of last year with revenues up to €3.7 billion from €2.2 billion the previous year. These are absolutely enormous jumps in profits while real human beings are suffering misery.

What needs to happen? We have argued for nearly a year and a half for the introduction of price caps and for a windfall tax but to be honest, I think we are beyond that. We need to renationalise the energy sector. There is no justification for the energy sector being run on a for-profit basis because privatisation has been a disaster. The Government tries to blame the Ukraine war for the current situation but the facts are absolutely clear. Ever since we had the privatisation of energy in this country, energy prices, including electricity prices, have consistently shot through the roof. It is unconscionable that we can see these obscene super profits being made on the backs of the misery, hardship and suffering that ordinary people are experiencing with many people being driven outright into poverty. This is even in terms of the utter inconsistency and injustice of the tariffs they are being charged. I have raised the issue of district heating, as have others here today. People are being charged multiples of the unit cost per kWh than other people are being charged. It is utterly unjustifiable in the current situation. What does the Government do about it? Zero. Zilch. Nothing. It talks about it.

Over the weekend, it was reported that multinational companies are getting significantly lower price rates for their energy than our residential customers or even small businesses here which are being charged multiples of what big multinationals are being charged. It seems the energy companies can charge lower unit rates when they want to but there is no consistency and no fairness so some of the biggest and most profitable companies are charged significantly less for their energy than the struggling homeowners who are being crushed by the cost-of-living crisis. How is that addressed? The entire sector should be nationalised. Obviously, you pull out of insane treaties such as the Energy Charter Treaty where states allow energy companies to sue them if they do not make enough profits, which is unbelievable but is symptomatic of the way in which we have handed over the energy sector to private, for-profit companies and, tragically, the Green Party is going to do the same with our offshore wind energy, which is an even bigger disgrace.

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