Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am tempted to address all the points but I will stick to the amendment.

To Deputy Danny Healy-Rae, climate action is all about electrification, including electrification of transport and heating. In urban areas there will be district heating, which is not electrification but there is a move towards electrification. Therefore, there needs to be an increased focus on price regulation and making sure people are not making unfair profits in any sector in the market. That is why we are taking the unfair profits from those companies and redistributing them to consumers. This is a good thing.

Deputy McGrath mentioned that small companies are suffering and so on. We introduced a temporary business energy support scheme last year. This year, €250 million was put aside in the budget to help companies with their energy bills. In addition, there are the energy credits, the Deputy mentioned, to help people with their bills, which will cost up to €1 billion this winter. They were helpful last year. In addition, there will be increases this winter in a number of targeted social welfare payments, such as the living alone allowance, the fuel allowance, the qualified child payment and so on, aimed at people who may end up in fuel poverty.

I will return to Deputy Whitmore's amendment which asks for additional reports to those specified in the legislation before us tonight. The problem with the additional reports is that they would contain commercially sensitive information about hedging strategies and long-term power purchase agreements, which form an important part of the competitive energy market. For that reason it would not be in the public interest to release that information. I want the bill to specify that as much information as is fairly, legally and reasonably possible to publish should be published, but not to go so far as to damage the ability of the market to function or of companies to operate. For that reason, I do not accept the amendment.

See this speech in context