Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 8, between lines 34 and 35, to insert the following: “(6) Without prejudice to any provision of this Act, “hedging arrangement” in accordance with section 14, shall not be limited to the period beginning on 1 December 2022 and

ending on 30 June 2023, but shall be extended until such time as the Minster deems fit.”.

Amendment No. 2 - I have said it previously to the Minister of State - relates to hedging arrangements and the reporting of those arrangements to the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU. Previously, when we discussed this issue, I welcomed this component of the Bill. It is positive that the Minister of State is expecting and requiring companies to provide that information to the CRU. It needs to go beyond this Bill. The information should be with the CRU anyway. We have had all these debates about energy pricing and questions about energy prices going up pretty quickly after the war in Ukraine and being very slow to come down. The reason given for that was hedging. However, there was zero transparency regarding hedging. When we spoke about the CRU investigating and examining pricing, the lack of visibility to CRU itself as regards hedging arrangements was a problem. This is welcome and I hope that the Minister of State will extend it and give stronger powers and more teeth to the Commission for Regulation of Utilities when it comes to pricing. I ask that he consider extending the timeframe for that in the Bill.

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