Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to speak on this Bill for the Labour Party. The State will have spent, I think, close to or in excess of €2 billion in energy credit payments since the onset of the energy crisis. We know only too well that this is by definition an untargeted measure. It is universal in nature and has been explained away as a once-off emergency measure to help people through a temporary crisis. I said it on budget day in my response and I will say it again: "once-off" is probably the most abused term in the Irish political lexicon. As Deputy O'Rourke said earlier, here we are again. I think what he meant by that was here we are again talking about once-off measures when what Irish households, especially those in energy poverty, need is considerably more support.

When I speak about more support, I do not mean only direct, immediate financial support; I mean the forms of retrofitting to which Deputy Gould has referred. There is a distinct lack of ambition from the Department and the SEAI this year. There is less than an additional €50 million on the retrofitting side, when actually what we need is a retrofitting revolution. The Labour Party has made it very clear. We were first out of the traps to describe in conceptual terms what we would do with the Apple tax windfall that this Government seems to think is a problem and not an opportunity. We would use a considerable amount of that resource to engage in what we call a street-by-street retrofitting revolution. That is what we need, instead of tinkering around at the edges with piecemeal measures that are by definition untargeted. I rarely make the point that TDs are different, that they do not need this, that and the other, but I would argue that there is probably nobody here who requires this kind of support this year, last year or the year before. There are, however, many more of my constituents, working people and people who rely on the State for their incomes, who could do with a hell of a lot more.

The "once-off" excuse just does not wash any longer. Surely it should not be beyond the ken of very experienced experts in the Department and elsewhere to come up with a scheme that is more targeted and is focused on those who need more support, those who are actually at risk of energy poverty and those who are in energy poverty. We know who they are. They are rural dwellers reliant on fossil fuels. They live in cold, damp, non-retrofitted homes. They could do with deep retrofits. They could do with the addition of solar panels and solar energy or heat pumps to assist them. They are the families on the working family payment, whom we in Labour have said should all be included in the fuel allowance scheme.

We are grateful and appreciative to see that those in receipt of the carer's allowance above certain thresholds will receive the fuel allowance. I notice, however, that the fuel allowance has been extended more or less to everyone - within income thresholds, of course - between the ages of 66 and 70. That is interesting. I am not sure, because I have not read the evidential basis for that, but we know there is an election coming along and it will be popular on the doors. How cynical can you get? What about the fuel allowance rate itself? The rate has not been increased in a number of years. We know that just over one in eight people in Ireland are living in energy poverty, and this measure does little to help that figure come down. It is hard to make the case for any form of energy credit. Given, however, the fact that these credits have now become a recurring feature of the system, though many of us on this side of the House would say they need to be brought to an end, most parties included a form of credit in their costed alternative budgets but with measures to claw back or better target. We in Labour extended a levy on the still very high profits of energy companies in order to pay for this. The responsibility would not then be landed on the Exchequer, on the taxpayer, at somebody else's expense. That money could then be better deployed to those who actually need it. We would have extended the levy on energy companies to pay for additional resources, especially for those who are in energy poverty.

It is interesting to note as well that merely by switching provider, the gain would be greater than what one would get from an energy credit. We would always encourage people, of course, to identify where they may be able to get better deals. That in itself, however, gives an insight into some of the fat involved for the energy providers. Energy companies are enormously profitable. The wholesale price of gas has come down considerably. We remember, of course, that when the wholesale price of gas went up, the energy companies were very quick indeed, notwithstanding hedging, to impose additional high costs on consumers. They are not as quick to bring energy prices down for the ordinary consumer.

The Minister of State will be interested in the ESRI research published today. It says that regulatory delays in development of energy infrastructure leads to both increases in electricity prices - 10%, it says - and an inevitable increase in carbon emissions, by 4%. The longer the delays in rolling out renewable infrastructure and energy infrastructure more generally, the more reliance there is on fossil fuel energy generation and supply. There is a logic to that. We understand that. In a way, the study points to problems we are already aware of. One of the things the report proposes is more frequent application windows for grid connection and parallel, or at least better, co-ordination between regulators. Getting our own act together in this space would bring down costs for consumers, bring down emissions more quickly and give certainty to investors who may not be all that confident about investing in Ireland's energy infrastructure and in renewable energy production, such as offshore wind, for example.

Offshore wind is billed, including by the former Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, who is right, as our moonshot moment.

It would create the sustainable jobs of the future, which I know the Minister of State knows and believes, endless supplies of clean energy, massive reductions in emissions and energy security for this country. It is a no-brainer that we, as a State, do what the Labour Party has proposed, that is, to invest some of the Apple windfall money and resources from our newly created sovereign wealth funds into the future in taking direct investments and stakes to make offshore wind happen at the scale we need. We need this to happen at scale and we need that to happen now. The returns should be obvious. It would send a signal to investors that we, as a State, have the confidence to make this happen. It is the classic no-brainer. A direction, in my view, ought to be given to the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, which is governed under the aegis of NTMA, on this very critical matter, not just with regard to national environmental policy but also with regard to national enterprise and social policies.

As has been said, Ireland is among the countries with the highest energy prices in the European Union. In the Labour Party’s view, this should be the subject of an independent examination. This needs to be considered in great detail and it needs to change. Some of the levers available to Government and to the regulator need to be used to bring those costs down until we get to the point where we can develop offshore wind at scale to bring energy prices down for homes and where we can engage in the retrofitting revolution that is needed in this country to save householders money and to reduce emissions. That is the case we in the Labour Party make. That is what ought to be happening. That is the kind of big vision and ambition that was lacking in the Government’s budget announced last week.

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