Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 3:

In page 7, between lines 12 and 13, to insert the following:

“Reporting

4.The Minister shall, within six months of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay before Dáil Éireann a report on the application of, including the use of the proceeds from, the Temporary Solidarity Contribution.”.

This is my only amendment, unfortunately, because the remainder have also been ruled out of order due to the money message. There are questions to be asked about the money message because the amendments we tabled were not going to be a cost to the State. They would have brought additional money to the State. The Constitution states, "no law shall be enacted, for the appropriation of revenue or other public moneys unless the purpose of the appropriation shall have been recommended to Dáil Éireann by a message from the Government signed by the Taoiseach". I do not see how my amendment, which dealt with the ring-fencing of money, could be seen as costing the State anything additional. It was just a way of divvying up that money. The Minister of State himself said that all contributions and revenue accrued from this would be ring-fenced for the purposes of using that money in a targeted way to assist with energy costs and energy poverty. I fail to understand how this money message was put in place. Indeed, some other Members of the Opposition changed the calculations in order that more money was being brought in. I do not think that is a correct way of applying the money message and wanted to put that on the record.

This amendment relates to reporting. The amendment states, "The Minister shall, within six months of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay before Dáil Éireann a report on the application of, including the use of the proceeds from, the Temporary Solidarity Contribution." That essentially mirrors what is expected from the EU of Ireland when this TSC is applied. That is done through Council Regulation (EU) 2022/1854 on the emergency intervention to address high energy prices. It specifies that "Regular and effective monitoring and reporting to the Commission are essential for the assessment of progress made by the Member States in the achievement of the demand reduction targets, the implementation of the cap on market revenues, the use of the surplus revenues, and the application of regulated prices" and accordingly that "Member States should report to the Commission on the application of the solidarity contribution" and "Member States should also report on the use of the proceeds from the solidarity contribution".

That is an appropriate thing for the EU to require of each member state. It is also appropriate for the Government to report to Members in this House too, which is why I incorporated that amendment. There should be transparency about this TSC, how it is applied, how much money the Government gets in, and what the Government is going to do with that money. That needs to be a transparent process. As I stated, last week, when I debated this, this windfall tax, as people would call it, serves two purposes. One is to ensure that energy companies are not profiting from war. It also serves the purpose of having people, members of the public, who have suffered as a result of high energy costs being put on them as a result of the war and profiteering by companies, being able to be sure that energy companies are being held to task when it comes to these payments and that this is a matter of gaining and keeping trust with the public. They can then believe that politicians in this Chamber recognising the difficulty they have and are going some way to assist them. To do that, we need to have full transparency about that money, which is why I have incorporated it in that section.

I hope the Minister of State will accept this amendment. It is a small, minor amendment but it is important. As I said, the Minister of State was already providing that information to the EU. All we would ask would be that he also provide it in this Chamber.

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