Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

That should be in the legislation. The targeting of it should also be spelled out in the legislation.

An element of the Bill I welcome and was interested to see is that the hedging element from these companies will be notified to the CRU as the competent authority. That is welcome but I ask that it not be limited to the Bill and this period in time. It is important that the CRU has the ongoing ability to examine, monitor and investigate the hedging and contractual arrangements. This week, the Central Bank stated Irish prices are out of line because energy companies are failing to transfer reductions to consumers. Those hedging practices need to be monitored. The CRU is best placed to do that and the fact it has been given the powers under the Bill is welcome. It needs to be in place not as an emergency measure or power given to the CRU but as a standard monitoring power it has and uses all the time.

There is a need for transparency. Nowhere in the Bill is there an indication that the profits being made by various companies will be made public. There needs to be reporting on that and it needs to be publicly available because every person who has paid really high electricity and other energy prices in the past two years should be entitled to know which companies were profiting. That information should be publicly available. That is an important aspect of what the Bill could achieve. I ask the Minister of State to look into that.

I welcome the Bill. It is important that the Government is moving on it. It could be stronger, more robust and better future-proofed. I would welcome a discussion with the Minister on that. I hope he can take some of my suggestions on board.

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