Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I fully support this amendment. Regardless of one's instinct, impulse or opinion on the passing on of wholesale price reductions, one thing that I hope we can all agree on - we have heard it from Minister after Minister - is that there was no transparency or oversight of hedging practices. The Taoiseach, Tánaiste, Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications, the Minister for Finance, for Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, to this day, say that energy companies are not going far enough and we need to see a quicker passing on of wholesale price reductions. I think the Minister for Finance specifically said that there is a lack of transparency and no reasonable explanation for why those prices reductions were not passed on. The companies pointed to their hedging practices and strategies. We raised this with the CRU at the committee. It said quite clearly that it knows companies have hedging strategies but beyond that, what they are and what they mean in terms of profitability and where profitability ends and price gouging starts, there is no line of sight. This is the second iteration of this Bill we have seen. When we saw the heads of Bill, I think as far back as earlier in the summer, there was an indication that this element of hedging oversight would be in the Bill; it was not in the temporary solidarity contribution piece. It has made it in under capital market revenues, which is the appropriate place for it. That it is so constrained, I think there is an acknowledgment - given it is there at all - that it is required. We heard from the CRU that it does not have that line of sight.

We know that from looking at other regulators. In our office we looked at regulators in Britain, France and Germany. They have a greater line of sight over hedging practices, which would be entirely appropriate, and necessary from Sinn Féin's perspective. When we saw this weakness, we published over the summer the Electricity Regulation (Amendment) Bill, which among other things would serve to give the regulator this type of oversight. The Minister of State has an opportunity to do it now by accepting this sensible amendment. I think he should do that.

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