Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

A gentleman came to my clinic last week. He is a lovely man in his early 70s. He is a fine fresh guy. He said he pays €20 a week out of his pension to put towards his electricity bill. At one stage last year he was more than €700 in credit but because the price rises kept coming, the €20 a week is not enough to meet the bills coming in. He has slowly run into arrears which have built up bill after bill. Now he is worried that he will be disconnected. This is an elderly man who worked all his life. He lives alone. His fear is that he will be disconnected and left without electricity. He asked me what supports there are for pensioners and what supports there are for people.

About a month ago when I was canvassing I knocked on the door of lady where I went in for a cup of tea. As the Minister of State knows, normally when we are canvassing we are running but this lady invited me in and I knew her husband who had passed away approximately nine months earlier. She told me that she could not pay the bills on one pension and that they barely survived where there was the two of them. Unfortunately he passed away. She does not want to be a burden on her children. She has a beautiful home. She is a beautiful lady. She was in the depths of depression. Not alone did she lose the man she loved but now she cannot survive. This is on the Minister of State's watch. It is on the Government's watch. It has left these big companies make extraordinary profits. The Minister of State said it himself a few minutes ago. It was not us who left them do it; it was the Government.

What we are saying is that there has been a complete failure by the Government with regard to regulation. If there were ever those who should not get involved in regulation, they are Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. We have seen what light-touch regulation did. It destroyed the country during the financial crisis. Then they did the exact same with the big energy companies. The Minister of State gave a figure of €352 million which was received from the solidarity windfall tax. At the same time the ESB made €868 million. This is one example. What the Government is doing is taxing people because the energy bills are higher. The big energy companies are making more money and people are living in poverty on the Government's watch. It should be ashamed of itself.

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