Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

In the context of the motion, we need to go further. However, I will support it. I thank Sinn Féin for bringing it forward for debate. It gives us an opportunity to discuss our whole energy system. That system is broken. The cost of heating homes and keeping the lights on has surpassed what many people can afford. We have giant fossil fuel and other energy companies making billions in profit while more and more people are forced into energy poverty. The ESRI has estimated that 29% of people are in energy poverty now. At the same time, the cost of producing this energy is destroying our planet and causing the climate crisis.

There are winners and losers in the climate crisis. The winners are the fossil fuel super-rich who owe their billions to destroying our planet. The losers are all of us paying massive energy bills to have our world destroyed. It is no longer good enough to leave the solution up to those with a direct profit motive to make this crisis worse. The energy market is the perfect example of how our current policy of market-based solutions is failing. There are two sides to this one coin, with one side the extortionate cost of buying energy and other the climate-destroying cost of producing that energy. In the context of both problems, the Government is not challenging the private companies. The only people benefiting from the situation are being allowed to shape our response.

As has been said, deregulation has led to higher electricity prices and less control over them. As I previously said in respect of deregulation, we have some of the highest electricity prices in Europe. The approach I have described, both in terms of the cost of energy for ordinary people and the cost to the planet, is failing. We are missing targets we have agreed to with the EU and in the context of the Paris Agreement. The Government is even missing climate targets it set for itself. It is becoming harder and harder for people to afford energy and to heat their homes.

What we need to do is have State interventions that begin to address these problems. We know what we need to do. In the short term, we need immediate regulations and price controls to stop the price gouging by the energy companies and not the windfall tax the Government brought in that had 20% price gouging built into it. These energy companies should not be getting any profit increases when ordinary people cannot afford to heat their homes and when the production of this energy is destroying the planet.

We need a State-led campaign to retrofit homes and build renewable energy. We must establish a State company to carry out a retrofitting program, starting with council houses, moving on to all those at risk of or in energy poverty and then everybody else. We will need to retrofit almost all buildings in the country, and the State should lead the way. If the State were to lead a programme of this nature, it would go a long way towards convincing the people of this country that the Government is serious about the climate crisis and climate change.

We also need the mass construction of solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy. There is no reason energy could not be nationalised under a State energy company. We need free public transport to manage a green, renewable-fuelled transport system and give people a real, affordable alternative to cars. These programmes would provide thousands of permanent, high-value, well-paid jobs.

What we cannot do is allow fossil fuel and energy companies to come up with a solution to the crisis they cause and for them to profit from it. Meanwhile, energy bills go up, as do global warming and fossil fuel use and the profits of energy companies.

We know this is a global problem that is caused by the global economic structure, but in Ireland we have particularly acute problems. We are uniquely placed to produce a wealth of wind and sea power and yet we consistently miss our targets. We have a knowledge economy and yet we completely lack an industrial policy to put it to use in order to fight the climate crisis. We are positioned to lose 30% of our grid to data centres in the coming decades, as we lack the regulations to stop climate destruction. We have some of the highest energy bills for ordinary people in Europe because we have failed to step in and stop price gouging. We have also failed to build the infrastructure and to carry out the necessary retrofitting to take the power away from the giant fossil fuel and energy companies. We must tax the billions in profit made destroying the planet and the price gouging of ordinary people and spend it on solving this crisis ourselves. We must intervene at this stage.

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