Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

-----and I am sorry that I did not get a chance to challenge his countermotion directly with him.

I must first thank Sinn Féin for tabling this important motion on energy costs. We are happy to support the measures in it, such as beefing up the CRU to try to address the high cost of energy in this country. However, we would go further, and we think we need caps. We tabled a Bill at the beginning of this year to bring in energy price caps. Indeed, we would go further than that and say that we have to nationalise the energy sector in this country if we are actually going to deal with the fact that we have the highest energy prices in Europe. People are being ripped off and it is a direct result of the philosophy that has been pursued by the Minister, Deputy Ryan, and successive governments. The essence of the problem is captured in his countermotion where he says, accurately, that:

— the position of successive Governments has been that competitive energy markets result in greater choice for consumers and businesses, in terms of suppliers, products and prices; and prices in the electricity and gas retail markets have been fully deregulated since 2011 and 2014 respectively;

That is an accurate statement of Government's position, and it bears absolutely no relationship to the reality of what has happened since that deregulation. In fact, the exact opposite happened. I was amusing myself by looking at the articles on deregulation in 2011, which is when it happened. The ESB's chief executive was celebrating the deregulation when he stated:

We have waited a long time for this to happen, and for much of that time, the ESB was saying that if the regulator removed its shackles it would be able to aggressively compete on price.

He said the company has been given the chance to "get into the game" and said that it would create a "win-win situation for the suppliers and consumers and should drive down prices".

That is exactly what the Minister said in this countermotion. More than 14 years later, however, the exact opposite happened. As soon as it deregulated, got into the game and moved the ESB from a not-for-profit mandate to competing in a for-profit, deregulated market, our prices for electricity went from the lowest in Europe to the highest. That is exactly what happened. We have the highest prices in Europe. When the ESB had a not-for-profit mandate, we had the lowest prices in Europe. It does not take a genius to work that out, yet the Government continues with the mantra of competition producing lower prices. It baffles me and is sort of Orwellian that that continues to be the mantra. It is absolutely shocking. Of course, the result is misery for 29% of the population. More than a quarter of the population, according to the ESRI, suffers energy poverty. Most of that is concentrated among people in private rental accommodation and council houses. Disproportionately, there is almost double the level of energy poverty if you are a private renter or you live in a council house because they have not been retrofitted. The proportion of your income you have to pay for energy is more than twice the proportion of income rich people have to pay. The Government compounds this with a series of regressive taxes like the carbon tax, VAT and excise. All of them are regressive. This is not me saying this - the studies are there. The richest 10% of the population spends 10% of household income on indirect taxes. The poorest 10% spend 29% on indirect taxes. Coincidentally, the same number suffer energy poverty because one of the biggest expenditure items for poor people is keeping their houses warm. The net result of the manner in which the Government has done this has compounded the impacts of the deregulation and privatisation of the energy market. Of course the Ukraine crisis had an impact. Only a fool would say it did not have an impact, but only a fool would fail to acknowledge that the energy companies took advantage of it and engaged in rampant profiteering. Their profits every single year have gone through the roof on the back of these energy price hikes. The Government wants to compound the situation. It was forced, under pressure, to give one-off payments to somewhat mitigate this but its longer-term policy, stated in this countermotion, is to remain committed to a competition model which resulted in prices going steadily up since the market was deregulated and in regressive taxes that disproportionately hurt the poor.

To further compound it, there is a grant model for retrofitting homes which favours the wealthy. It is much easier for the wealthy to make up the gap between the actual cost and the grants available to retrofit a home if they are in certain income brackets than it is for workers who cannot make up that gap. One could even argue to some degree that retrofits of homes of the very wealthy are subsidised by the taxes of the very poor, which is ironic and unacceptable. We believe more robust measures need to be taken, we need to learn the lesson that the deregulation of the energy market was a disaster and we need to go back to the ESB having a not-for-profit model and imposing caps on energy prices, as we proposed in a Bill this year. To be honest, our Bill was not even particularly radical. It suggested that the per kWh price for electricity be set at 25 cent and for gas at 8 cent. Currently, Bord Gáis charges 8.94 cent per kWh, SSE Airtricity charges 9.61 cent per kWh and Flogas charges 10.18 cent per kWh. Gas is currently 35.83 cent per kWh. We proposed a cap of 25 cent per kWh. Those are the prices for standard customers. I have seen kWh prices for people on district heating systems which are multiples of that. There are shocking levels of prices. People in those properties, usually apartment blocks, with other lesser known companies are being ripped off. They do not even have access to so-called competition because they are tied into a particular system of district heating and getting astronomical bills. Frankly, I do not know how some people even manage to pay them, they are so shockingly high. Then there is the human misery that flows from that, particularly for elderly people, people with disabilities and poor or vulnerable people. The suffering and hardship that results from all of this is shocking. That is our view. We welcome Sinn Féin's proposals. They would be an improvement. We need to go further by returning to a not-for-profit model for the energy sector and capping prices.

The Minister is sometimes praised for wanting to develop offshore renewable wind energy. Of course, we should have that but it will make absolutely no difference to energy prices if it is privatised, which is the plan. In fact, the French state energy company will own more of the energy produced offshore in this country than we will. That is a flipping scandal.

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