Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

People Before Profit welcomes this legislation but it is beyond me why it has taken so long to bring it to this juncture. Why do we have to put legislation forward to compel energy companies to give money back? In the last number of years, and well beyond, the companies have been seriously profiteering from the energy crisis. People's bills have borne this out. Ordinary people are struggling with huge energy bills that are completely out of sync in relation to their income. People are really struggling. They must make a choice and may have no alternative between heating their home or eating. In the past years many people have been left with that kind of choice while we also have the immoral situation of energy companies making vast amounts of money on people's misery. How was this allowed to happen? On what grounds was this allowed to happen is open for debate.

Over the past decades the liberalisation and the deregulation of energy in Ireland has not worked. Energy costs 25 years ago in relation to bills were actually much cheaper in Ireland than in any other European country. There was no competition: the ESB was the monolith and it was a very good company. Now we have regulation and we have competition. Has it brought more efficiency? No it has not. Has it brought prices down? No, it is doing the opposite. Now we have a situation where a number of companies have made absolutely vast amounts of money and particularly in the last number of years.

Windfall taxes in their complexity are probably a once-off measure. They do not look retrospectively at the vast amounts of money these companies have made. This is where it draws its weakness. We must look at the details around how much money can be expelled from a windfall tax. I am sure these companies now have their accountants ready to go to see how they can get out of some of the loopholes around paying this tax.

One of the other substantial aspects we need to talk about is how energy companies are planned in this country. Ideologically I believe that public services such as energy should be nationalised. There should be no competition and they should be there for the public good. They should look at the situation around renewables, being completely environmentally friendly, and also being accessible to the public. Now, however, we have the opposite of that. The bigger question here is around the nationalisation of energy companies. In other countries we can see a different model rather than the capitalist model of competition all the time. A model of nationalisation is a better and more efficient system than what we have at the moment.

The Bill is welcome but it is very late in the day. Again, the devil is in the detail and how much money we can expel from these companies. There should not be a need for legislation on it in this House in the first place. These companies should not be in a situation where they are making excessive profits. They actually should give the money back because it is our money at the end of the day. They should be compelled to give this money back rather than having to use emergency legislation like this.

See this speech in context