Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We in the Labour Party welcome this Bill. Exorbitant revenues and profits have been taken in by energy companies over the past number of years, while more and more people have been plunged into energy poverty. Coupled with the broader cost-of-living crisis in the areas of housing and grocery prices, the situation has been dire for far too many people. All the while, the cash kept rolling in for energy companies. It has taken nearly two years for the Government to take serious and meaningful action since the Labour Party was the first to call for a windfall tax on energy profits to support people, as bills were on the rise. In the past 12 months, following our motion on the cost of living in January of last year, Shell reported $40 billion in profits, while BP’s profits have doubled. Likewise, profits soared at ESB and Centrica, the owner of Bord Gáis, while revenue at the Corrib gas field - which we in the Labour Party called on to be temporarily nationalised - rose considerably.

A report by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul earlier this year showed that 377,000 people were unable to adequately heat their homes last year. Compare this with the figure of 166,000 in 2021, and the scale of the harm caused by the energy crisis becomes abundantly clear. More than double the number of people could not properly keep themselves warm. An additional 98,000 people went without heating entirely. That is a catastrophe. The Government responded by dithering around the edges and handing out tokenistic energy credits and fuel allowance increases which, to be fair, were welcomed by hard-pressed people and families in the short term. An emergency situation, of course, requires immediate interventions. Yet, they were easily a get-out-of-jail-free card for energy companies and they failed to get to the root of the issue, namely, the gross and excessive profits being taken in by those companies.

The Government has taken an almost passive approach to dealing with the energy crisis and introducing actual fundamental solutions. We were glad it finally implemented the windfall tax before the summer recess but that should have been done months before then. So, too, should this portion of the Bill to cap market revenues have been implemented sooner. We were told initially that the delay to these two measures being brought forward was due to the Government waiting for European Council regulations to inform its response to the extraordinary profits being made. That regulation was published last October. It was not until March that the general scheme of this Bill was published. It took eight months for us to even debate the windfall tax formally and now, nearly a year later, we are debating the cap on revenues. When we look across Europe, we can see that our neighbours have been much quicker in dealing with the energy crisis and implementing both aspects of the Council regulation. We are one of only two countries in the EU that have not implemented some kind of retail price regulation. The Government has shown a total lack of urgency in responding to this crisis. What it has shown, however, is that it does not completely comprehend the scale of the struggle people are experiencing. Its lack of urgency is endemic; it has shown this when responding to the crisis in housing, the crisis in health and the climate crisis.

All of that said, we in the Labour Party are glad that we are now finally seeing action on implementing a cap revenues of energy companies. It is a measure for which we are in total support, albeit we would have liked to have seen action on it a lot sooner, I have said. However, the need for the provisions of this Bill exposes design flaws in the energy market and while I am conscious that we are talking about a European competency here, it is a point worth making nonetheless.

We can all agree now that we need to see a decoupling of energy prices from the prices of natural gas. I note that the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has said something to that effect as well. There is broad consensus now that we need to fundamentally reform the energy market. That is a welcome development but it is incumbent on us now to keep the pressure on the EU to follow through on it. There are two primary reasons, as far as I can see, that underscore the importance of decoupling the energy market. The first relates to Europe's reliance on Russian natural gas. We saw the hike in wholesale prices of gas that meant the prices of all energy sources rose as a result of Russia’s brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine. It did not cause the energy crisis, because prices were already rising considerably, but it undoubtedly exacerbated it. We in the European community simply cannot leave ourselves so exposed to an aggressive, despotic and morally bankrupt leader such as Putin. That is abundantly clear. As long as Europe is so reliant on Russia for energy, Putin can threaten us with pulling the plug. We need to decouple gas from other energy sources so that we can make those alternative sources, particularly renewables, more accessible to households.

This brings me to the second point. Tying the energy prices to the price of gas is acting as a barrier to transitioning towards greener energy. Renewable energy is cheaper to produce, but because the price is coupled with the price of gas, the production costs are not reflected in the price customers pay. If we want to make green energy like solar or wind energy the default, then it needs to be more accessible to people, as well as needing to be the cheapest option available. That is possible, and the first step is getting there by decoupling the price of green energy from that of gas. Indeed, that is in and of itself a design flaw in the European energy market. It is a self-imposed obstacle to creating a green energy market and a green economy. Tearing down that obstacle is an important step and, as I have said, I am glad there is broad agreement on that. It is imperative, however, that at the same time we build up the necessary infrastructure to insulate us in the future. As far as I am concerned, we cannot talk about energy without talking about the climate crisis. The two issues are inseparable. We cannot approach any measure dealing with the cost-of-living and energy crises without seriously considering the implications they will have for meeting our climate and emissions reduction targets. We need to go far further and quicker in giving significant investment to green energy sources like solar, heat capture and wind.

We have all known for years that we can be a world leader in wind energy production. Our offshore potential is the envy of Europe, but we are failing to live up to that potential. If we are to meet the target in the climate action plan of 5 GW by 2030, we need to move more rapidly in investing in offshore infrastructure and considerably scaling up our capacity. The same can be said for solar energy generation. We are seeing more and more houses where solar panels are installed on their roofs. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, grants that have been made available for those who wish to install solar panels have been a welcome measure and we need to see more of that. We want to see as many people as possible installing solar panels and I believe there is a genuine desire among the population to do so. We need to capitalise on this and be more ambitious. Further investment in this area should be made to bring down installation prices in order that solar panels can be made even more accessible as at present, even with the grants available, many of those who may wish to have them installed remain locked out due to the cost.

The bottom line, however, is that the Government is failing to build up the necessary infrastructure to get us through the energy crisis and protect us into the future. We are now facing another winter that will no doubt see more piecemeal measures that do not address the fundamental issues. Those measures would be fine if they were short-term emergency measures but it appears they are now the default. They are something for the Government to point at in order to get them out of Dodge City for failing to give the green transition the considerable attention it warrants. We know the technology is there and we have the resources. All that is missing is the political will. There has been a lack of political will to really grasp the nettle and take the radical action that is required.

I accept that we need to support those who are struggling most with the energy crisis. That, of course, must be our priority, but we need to see more ambition and investment in our green energy infrastructure.

I will finish with a direct appeal to the Government. When it brings forward its emergency supports in the forthcoming budget to alleviate some of the pressure on households facing into another bleak winter, we need to see a proper targeting of those supports. The energy crisis and the cost-of-living crisis, more broadly, does discriminate. It affects some far more than it affects others. We had a situation last year where credits were being given to people who were effectively isolated from the cost-of-living crisis. For the most part, high-income households were not struggling to keep up with bills. Those funds could have been used to much greater effect by targeting them towards those who really needed it. Virtually all research shows that the best way to prevent families and households falling into energy poverty is through targeted supports. The Government must be proactive in administering supports. It cannot take the same lazy approach as last year's budget, with universal payments, because those harmed by the cost-of-living crisis need the greatest level of support possible. We simply cannot have another winter in which households cannot keep themselves warm.

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