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

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this issue and I also thank the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, for being here to take it. I raised the issue very briefly with him on Priority Questions last week but I am glad to have some extra time here to focus on it.

I am concerned that people, who are isolated, have exorbitant bills related to heat pump use. I have spoken to members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and they referenced an increase in calls in that regard. I have a number of cases in my own constituency offices, which I will raise with the Minister of State. From my own research it looks like there is something of a pattern here. In an article by Paul McNeive in the Irish Independent just last week he said he suspects that there are thousands of heat pumps not working properly in Ireland. He said he speaks to engineers who talk about issues such as undersizing, incorrect installation, incorrect commissioning, the localisation of foreign manufactured heat pumps, and backup electric immersion heaters. The installation and the commissioning are an acknowledged piece. When I raised it with the council and others in Meath they talked about the know-how on the operation of these systems. I hear really good and positive accounts of heat pumps that are working well and where people are comfortable using them but when I put this out on social media yesterday, some people said it took them a few weeks to get used to the system and to get it calibrated and working correctly. My concern is that there is a cohort of people who, through a combination of the installation and-or the operation of these systems, are suffering with exorbitant bills. They are not in a position to have the comfort of being able to build up a bill of hundreds of euro while they take time to get used to the system. A bill for hundreds of euro is something they cannot live with, although there are other people who can live with it.

Paul McNeive put it well in his article. He said that once it is discovered that there is an issue with the heat pump, the question is where the problem lies. Is it with the manufacturer, the installer, or the commissioning engineer? Is the tenant or the homeowner responsible? The question is wherein lies the responsibility. Everybody points to each other, but in the meantime the arrears are accruing and bills are increasing.

The SEAI conducted some behavioural studies in advance of the energy conference it has in the RDS. The Limerick Leader covered similar terrain in terms of the high cost of bills. The headline of one article by David Power in March referred to heat pump system bills being higher than a mortgage and that is frightening off Irish homeowners switching. Given that the Minister of State wants to see a significant roll-out of heat pumps there is the added implication that if there is a huge cost associated with them that it is a bad news story for them but I fear a small cohort of people are being driven into bad energy poverty and that there are not the supports or system in place for them.

See this speech in context