Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to make a contribution to this debate. I support the concerns and criticisms raised by my colleagues. While we will be supporting this Bill, the manner in which it has been rushed before the House is unsatisfactory and it is not an acceptable way to legislate on any issue, let alone one as important as this. The genesis of this legislation is a failure to plan for, and deliver on, our energy needs on the part of successive Governments. On this front, it is the continuous failure of Fine Gael, which has been in government for more than a decade, that has driven the State to the precipice of an energy crisis. For years, EirGrid has warned of the increasing tightness between energy supply and demand. The failure to deliver additional energy generation capacity, the failure to provide gas storage capacity and the failure to realise the potential of our renewables has been made much worse by the exponential increase in electricity demand from data centres, among others. Such a situation unmasks a Government that penny-pinches with regard to investment in our critical infrastructure, on the one hand, and rolls out the red carpet for data centres on the other.

We often speak in this House of potential energy blackouts but in many constituencies, there are regular temporary blackouts. In Lusk, in my constituency, there are regular electricity outages. This has gone on for nearly two years with no sign of improvement. I have raised the matter in the past and I want the Minister to know it was raised again with me last night at the Lusk action group annual general meeting, AGM. The people of Lusk talk about this matter constantly. They cannot rely on their electricity supply and that is not good enough.

I ask the Minister to please not send any more Government representatives to my constituency to explain that this is happening elsewhere. They are not fooled. They can see for themselves that it is concentrated in one area. This situation is allowed to occur because the Government would rather that the people I represent in Lusk sit in the darkness than upset the CEO of a multinational company who wants to open a data centre. Politics and government are all about priorities and the Minister can believe me when I say my constituents hear loud and clear where they figure in his priorities.

In the short term, I hope this Bill has the desired effect and allows us to deliver the emergency energy backup electricity generation we need. On the whole, it would be remiss of me not to address the current situation in respect of the cost of energy for ordinary people. Energy prices for ordinary citizens remain sky high and workers and families across the State have been left dismayed that there were no additional measures in the Government's cost-of-living package to reduce extortionate bills for electricity, gas and home heating oil. Energy companies reported record profits for 2022 at a time when prices were hiked and businesses and families were struggling to pay their bills. In many cases, these record profits are multiples of previous records. The figures are eye-watering and obscene and are facilitated by Government inaction. Why is the Government still dithering over a windfall tax? Why has it failed to introduce a cap on energy prices? Last week's confirmation that Electric Ireland will reduce bills for small and medium enterprises by 10% is welcome relief for those businesses but it does not go anywhere near far enough. Workers and families are being left out in the cold again. The Government cannot remain inactive on this issue. It cannot abandon those who need help the most and cannot keep dithering on the introduction of windfall taxes. It needs to intervene now to ensure energy companies pass on reduced wholesale energy costs to their domestic customers in full rather than to just a small cohort of business users.

However, I will not hold my breath because inaction on energy costs and the lifting of the eviction ban show ordinary people in exactly whose interests Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party govern. They get that message. They hear the Minister saying things like we absolutely could not introduce free public transport because someone might take an unnecessary journey. They are not foolish and know exactly where that comes from. They hear the attitude that it is okay for the Minister to go to Shanghai, China or wherever it is he is going, where I am sure he will do good work, at no personal cost to himself but rather at the taxpayer's expense. I wish him the very best of luck and hope he does well on his trade mission but people see it is all free travel for the Minister and his pals in Government but, when it comes to the mere mention of free or reduced-cost public transport for ordinary people, that is an absolute no-no because, God forbid, they might take an unnecessary journey. How awful would that be?

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