Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Energy (Windfall Gains in the Energy Sector) (Cap on Market Revenues) Bill 2023 is about putting limits on how much money electricity producers can make, as required by a European Union rule from October 2022. This limit will affect certain types of electricity production and will cover the period from December 2022 until June 2023. People are concerned because it took our Government almost a year to make this law while other countries did so much faster. It is hoped this new tax will bring in a lot of money but we do not yet know exactly how much. High energy costs are a big problem for people and the money from this tax should go to help them. This is the second law of its kind and it should be in place soon, generating between €80 million and €150 million.

Companies will need to follow deadlines, declare and pay this tax.

Again, I will just go back to what I said earlier and ask the Minister of State, why it took this long? People have suffered severely in this country over the past year and a half with high energy costs and the Minister of State and the Government were like hurlers on the ditch. For all the world the Government was supporting the energy companies to make sure they kept up their mass profits, which are exorbitant and crucifying, while the ordinary mother and father working hard daily were getting bills that they could not pay. I have seen loads of situations where people came to me and they were getting extraordinary bills of between €700 and €1,000.

To be honest, I do question one thing, the smart meter. I could totally be out of order here. In a lot of houses where they have been put in, the bills have gone from being an ordinary bill of between €180 and €200 to between €700 and €900. That is an astonishing rise and I wonder is smart metering not that smart at all, or maybe it is a smart system. Long ago, people could go out to their meter box and have a look and see the wheel going around and if you turned off everything, the wheel would stop. One cannot see anything now. All people know is they get the bill every two months in the door and it scares the living daylights out of them. Businesses have gone to the wall because of the Government's inactivity up to now. People cannot afford to pay the energy bills and the businesses had to pull the plug and walk away, with some people after giving all their lives trying to build their business and put it in place. They are people of goodwill employing people, and their business has gone to the wall.

I look at other areas where we have severe crises, like the early childcare sector. I accept that there are other factors involved in this. I attended a meeting in Cork recently. There is a crisis and there will be a peaceful protest next week that I fully support. Their doors are shutting all over the country because of costs and energy is certainly playing a big part in that. I will go as far as saying - and it is a different issue - that the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy Roderic O'Gorman, has absolutely ignored all of their pleas for help to keep their doors open. These are private individuals. In some cases, many of the women are telling me they go to their husbands to keep the business going every week and they are taking out of his income and his job. I was listening to several statements of the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and he is oblivious to the childcare crisis at this present time. Why they cannot keep the door open is mainly due to energy costs and other costs. He has to resign as Minister or be fired because he does not understand the crisis that is there at the moment. He keeps dreaming of figures out there that are not reaching the people on the ground. That is one of the issues.

One also looks at nursing homes closing. Again, part of it is due to energy costs, costs they cannot survive with. I know one in Belgooly that is closing. It was announced about six to eight weeks ago that it is closing its doors. We need answers for the people out there and the loved ones inside. Yes, HIQA is one of the reasons but the other reasons why nursing homes are closing, they are telling us, are costs. With energy costs, they cannot afford to keep the door open. The Rural Independent Group made some submissions regarding energy costs, and one of the things we are very strong about is the VAT on solar panels and insulation products. If there are moneys coming from this, they should go towards making them VAT exempt. It is a hugely important issue because people cannot afford to insulate their homes. They want to insulate their homes because they do not want to be plugging in heaters or putting on the oil. The only way they can do that is to try and insulate their homes, and unfortunately the Government squeezes as much money as it can, in every way, shape and form, out of the people. I am asking the Minister of State that some of this money might go towards making solar panels and all insulation products VAT and tax exempt.

I must go back also to the cost of living for so many people. They are struggling at the present time and it is incredible to think that we had a mini-budget around two weeks ago. This was the mini-budget that this Government always told us we could never have. It went and had a mini-budget. The Government drove fuel costs through the roof. Businesses that are struggling and cannot pay electricity or energy bills were all hit with the 9% to 13.5% VAT increase. The Government had a mini-budget, and it did it outside of Dáil time so it could get away with, and it did. Well done to Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party. Well done. They caught the cafés, the restaurant owners, the publicans and the hoteliers. They were the people who were struggling already and could not pay the bills. The Government caught them, left, right and centre, with a VAT rate increase from 9% to 13.5%. That will not be forgotten because some of those businesses are going to the wall. They have gone or are going to the wall because of the Government's policies, and because of a greedy grab. If the Government does not catch the poor person that wants to grab a cup of tea or coffee in the morning, it will catch them at the filling station because it shoved up the price of fuel. That is the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Green Party delivery to the people of this country. It is about hitting them every way they can to squeeze as much out of their pockets, so the Government can have a great budget day and blow about what a great deal it has done. However, it has squeezed the money out of their pocket in other ways.

People are well aware of what is going on out there, and I am more worried that some of this money the Government is going to get has to go back to the people out there who are suffering, or who have disabilities, and elderly people. They all need to have some bit of a break here. Last year, the Government gave some energy rebates. I do not think it has given anything this year, and people are still paying exorbitant fees.

There is an awful lot to be done here. It is astonishing that it took about a year and a half for the Government to decide that, well, it is time to wake up and do something. I ask the Minister of State to go further in doing something about it. I am asking for real delivery that goes back to the people who are finding it difficult to run their pubs, restaurants, cafés or whatever. It should go back to the elderly and people with disabilities to give some relief to them going forward.

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