Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the Labour Party, I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill, which, if passed, will provide for making three payments of €150 to ease the energy bills burden on hard-pressed households. While we will support this legislation on the basis of the adage that something is better than nothing, it bears repeating that this Government's approach to the cost of living is not effective. Rather than target inequality or the root cause of energy market insecurity and inflation, the Government has once again opted for a disappointing and untargeted payment instead. That is simply not sufficient to deal with the scale of the society-wide crisis we face.

Inflation is at a 20-year high. The CSO makes clear that energy prices are driving that increase. Eurostat reports that Ireland now has the single highest consumer prices in the European Union, in no small part owing to the cost of energy. Households and businesses across the country can expect to pay the third highest electricity prices in the European Union. The household energy price index report for 2023 indicates that Irish households paid more per capitafor their electricity than those in 33 other EU countries. That is notwithstanding the energy credits provided in the past year. Put another way, bills here are a colossal 80% higher than the EU average. In fairness, nobody in this House should require those statistics to tell them that working people across the country are finding it more difficult to keep the lights on. Our own experiences of paying the bills, and those of the people we are lucky to represent, show unequivocally that heating, electricity and transport costs are causing sleepless nights for many. Older people, those on lower incomes and people relying on social welfare payments stare in horror at the heating bills coming through the letter box.

They have no idea how to pay them. Temperatures should be dropping but one thing is staying the same: the industry is incapable or regulating itself and acting fairly towards its customers and the best the Government can do is to spend public money in an untargeted way to meet these extortionate bills. Any calls from these benches for intervention to cut bills have been met with derision or bemusement.

The regulator, the CRU, acts like a nodding dog. The experience of recent times has laid bare that the CRU is incapable of taking the side of consumers, whether those on pay-as-you-go meters who felt the crunch first, those in district heating schemes paying for energy at the commercial rate or those slapped with increase after increase over the past two years.

The word "crisis" is invoked regularly in these Houses but it is the only word to describe the cost-of-living situation in which we find ourselves. That said, we in the Labour Party are of the view that Government Members do not understand the scale and extent of this problem for working families. If they did, they might not be quite so timid in their response to the fall in living standards felt by hundreds of thousands of people whose life outcomes are determined by Government policies.

Wholesale prices have dropped and price cuts have been announced which we hope will ease the burden on households in the coming weeks. However, it exposes how anaemic Government solutions for households are that the best bill payers can expect is for some for-profit private corporations to see the morality in reducing prices after they have reaped record profits and are paying record dividends to their shareholders. Energy companies can blame the mechanics of the market all they want but it is clear they are much slower to pass on cuts in their costs to Irish householders than they were to hike up prices and rake in the record profits that resulted. Indeed, they deemed it inappropriate to give households a break when they passed the benefit of reduced wholesale prices on to businesses. The reductions we now see for households are paltry when we consider electricity costs have more than doubled in the past two years.

On budget day, it was confirmed the Government would take the same old approach again when we saw the return of our old friend the energy credit. It is the definition of an untargeted payment. For coalition parties who purportedly pride themselves on looking after the public purse, they have selected an exceptionally populist way of whittling it away. It is a questionable use of public money, not prudent or even generous. The cost of the measure is about €100 million less than the Government will spend on increases to all welfare schemes this year. It is multiples of what it will spend on combating child poverty. In essence, it amounts to bribing voters with their own money in a cost-of-living crisis when drastic measures are needed.

The Labour Party’s €2 billion cost-of-living package would have targeted money where it is needed most. It would have provided for a bonus in October and at Christmas for those who need it most this year, and not in January. It would have increased pensions, carer's allowance and other payments by €15 per month. It would have provided €9 monthly public transport across all modes and would have given renters a €1,000 tax credit. It would have drastically increased the supply of housing to slash rents, reduce reliance on HAP and cut house prices. With respect, I tell the Minister that is how to direct public funds to where they are needed, not by buying votes using public money or belatedly introducing half measures, but by investing in measures which can end poverty and insulate the entire country from the folly of market forces.

Our corporation tax receipts speak for themselves. Even when we strip away any so-called windfall corporation tax surpluses next year, we will still report a surplus. Before we start congratulating ourselves on the impressive performance of our domestic economy, we must ask what the value of that growth is when the fruits or our labour are not deployed to people when they need it most. That means stopping people from falling into fuel poverty, helping to ensure they make their rent or mortgage repayments at the end of the month and taking meaningful action to allow those on the breadline put food on the table for their families.

Ministers have often repeated the mantra that the current period of inflation is transitory, but the structural issues which condemn our population to a lifetime of poverty or scrimping and saving are not transitory. They are baked into the dominant market ideology, which is ultimately content to allow a situation where energy companies pull in mammoth profits while consumers pay through the nose. We have a real crisis on our hands and cannot afford to stand by and let the market sort it out, as is our tendency in this country.

When energy companies hiked up prices, the Government insisted the best it could do was ask politely that they not do so. When they used standing charges to further penalise customers, it did the same. Cabinet Ministers are not mere commentators. We have consistently raised the issue of price gouging by big companies recording supernormal profits, and the same goes for electricity companies.

While we will not oppose the Bill because it is a small relief for squeezed households, we are clear it does not go far enough. Energy companies have had it their way for too long. There needs to be structural change in terms of how the market operates so that it works for the benefit of consumers. That is where Government needs to act at an EU level. It should not be up to customers to bear almost exclusively the cost of this crisis. It must change but, unfortunately, the Government has passed up the opportunity to change it again this year.

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