Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill, but it is back to closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. The Bill is a bit late.

Given the effect of energy poverty we in Sinn Féin have called for this windfall tax for a long time. I will give the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, the story of a gentleman I know personally who went on radio and had no problem saying it. He works in pharma, has a semi-detached house, has a family and he has a car that he needs to get to work. He is struggling with energy bills. He actually had to borrow €100 from his daughter. That was his story on energy poverty. They are not the people we often talk about here who would be the less well off. This is also about the squeezed middle who are suffering. In my number of years in the House the problem we have with this Government and previous governments is that we seem to be more of a reactive society than a proactive society. We could see this coming two years ago. Previous speakers spoke about how other European countries reacted a lot faster than Ireland. Reference was also made to massive profits. We call this a windfall gains tax but at the end of the day it is taxpayers' money in that we would be giving back what was paid. We overpaid with extortionate prices for energy.

I also want to raise geothermal heating and why it is not being explored. I would say it is the cheapest energy on the planet. It must be 20-odd years ago that I put it in a house. It is the big two-inch heavy gauge coil buried about one metre underground, filled up with water and into a small pump. It is put underground in the same way as under-floor heating. In the winter the ground underneath is hot and it heats a home very cheaply. In the summer the ground is freezing underneath and cools the house. It is simple. There are other ways of doing this and making it easier and we should be looking at that.

Reference was also made to people struggling and going to the social welfare officer. Another thing happening at the moment is that social welfare officers are not being replaced. We do not have a social welfare officer in Midleton now. That would cover Midleton, Cobh, Carrigtwohill, Youghal, Killeagh, Castlemartyr and the surrounding areas. Where does one go to then when one is struggling? It is a database now and it is paperwork. It goes into a divisional office and some fella who has never met a person, does not know what they are like or what they are struggling with, will make a decision on whether he can help that person or not with energy costs. We are still quite possibly facing a tsunami of very difficult times if we get a bad winter this year. I do welcome that we are discussing this. It is not too often that we say this but things are turning in a more proactive way today. When I look at people's situations - and I listen to the elderly more so - they are absolutely terrified to leave the heating on.

I would love to know how much a 40 kg bag of smokeless coal actually costs to produce. When we see them advertised at three bags for €100 there is something wrong with the energy crisis in this country.

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