Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do not think I will use ten minutes. It feels like déjà vu. I have said it all before but we will say it again. Like the previous Deputy said, we will not oppose the Bill because it gives much-needed support to people who are in serious arrears. I do not think it is proper to call it a once-off payment. We had a once-off payment at the end of December 2022, so this is a second-, third- or fourth-off payment that is supposed to help people as a temporary measure.

I want to go to the heart and nub of the problem. These once-off payments, much as they are welcome, will not address the systemic problems that have led to extensive profiteering by the energy companies. Like all Deputies, we have been inundated with people who are terrified of the high costs of their gas and electricity bills and often make choices, as we know, between heating and eating.

The higher and higher levels of arrears reported to us are, we are told, because of the high cost of energy brought about by the brutal invasion of Ukraine. This is repeated to us all the time. That illegal war sparked a crisis but those flames caught on because of the way the European Union has built and developed a liberalised market in energy. In Ireland, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael changed the remit of the ESB and facilitated competition in energy provision. This neoliberal revolution was meant to herald an era of dynamic competition which would lead to reduced prices and less State investment. Prices were to come down because of competition but, as with all these neoliberal promises, what we got was very different. We got a plethora of competing firms, rising prices and profits, and sometimes an attack on the traditional workforce and their unions in companies.

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Eurostat figures show us that last year we paid 48% above the EU average for electricity in this country. It was reported in August that people are now paying €1,000 more a year for electricity in this country than the European average. We have the highest electricity prices in the whole of Europe. Bills here are 80% higher than the European average. There is only one way of explaining that, namely profiteering, profit gouging and unnecessary so-called competition that is supposed to bring down prices but actually forces them up.

I want to again make the case for renationalising the energy system. Instead of having an ESB which has a profit remit and makes vast profits from energy bills, we should return the not-for-profit remit to the ESB. That would allow the company to flourish and become a nationalised energy company, not just in the sector we have now but in what we hope will be a growing renewables sector. Ultimately, when we are faced with a crisis all private companies will do the same thing. They do what comes naturally. They will never waste a good crisis and we see widespread profiteering as a result. It is it is an opportunity for profits to be gouged and, therefore, costs for ordinary people go up.

On top of all of the Byzantine structure of the market, the cost of renewable energy, which should have gone right down, was built into that Byzantine market structure so that, regardless of where energy comes from, prices remained the same. According to the CRU, more than 400,000 households and half a million people are in energy arrears in the State. That has ratcheted up the level of energy poverty. Once-off help with electricity bills, while welcome because people are hard-pressed, do not deal with the source of the problem and heart of the crisis. If we continue with this market-based approach to energy provision, it will mean that crisis after crisis - there are many of them across the planet - the cost for ordinary people will continue to go up. Effectively, we are giving a subsidy to energy companies instead of tackling the failure of the ideology in the first place.

On top of that, there is the increased use of our energy market by data centres. There is no control over them. A number of planning applications for them have been granted and it is predicted that data centre usage will take 30% of the national grid by 2030, which is, after all, only a short six years away. We are failing to tackle the heart of the problem. We will give out this money. We will not oppose the Bill, but we have not seen the last of price gouging or profiteering. We will put a plaster on a gaping wound by passing the Bill, but we have no choice because we have to help people. We are not dealing with the core part of the crisis. That is where the Government is utterly failing. There is no sign of the Government attempting to deal with this issue through any legislation or provisions that might change the way we are being robbed in this country through the energy market.

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