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

Of course, nobody who receives this credit before or after Christmas will be sorry to do so. As the ESRI has pointed out, however, the net effect of the Government’s budget is that some of the least well-off and most vulnerable households will be marginally less well off. That is pretty shameful. Given the astonishing, unprecedented budget surpluses and, of course, the Apple billions, it is quite a feat. Even the ESRI, which is hardly a radical or left-wing think-tank, is saying the Government had the chance to eliminate poverty but did not take it and that some of the most vulnerable will actually end up worse off.

This is, first of all, an epic fail with those resources available to the Government. It begs the question that if poverty cannot be eliminated now, with an absolutely unprecedented budget surplus and billions of euro available to the State, to the point that billions have to be put away in a piggy bank, when is it going to be eliminated? The answer is that if poverty cannot be eliminated now, it is never going to be eliminated because there will always be other excuses when times become more financially constrained, the economy hits bumps and so on.

It is shameful that the Government, instead of eliminating poverty and setting out the complete elimination of poverty, including energy poverty, as an objective with all those resources available, gave us a couple of once-off payments that act as sticking plasters on a situation where one third of households in this country are at risk of or suffering from energy poverty. The big problem is the fact that because of the profiteering of energy companies in this country, we are paying twice the price of electricity being paid by the rest of Europe, on average, and we are paying 50% more for gas. Profiteering is the problem. Most of the money, as welcome as it will be for those who receive it who are struggling to pay their bills, will go into the pockets of profiteering energy companies instead of addressing the root problem, which is the profiteering in the first place. That is what we believe the Government should do, whatever about the other measures that are necessary in order to eliminate poverty and raise people out of poverty.

For example, in our alternative budget we stated the fuel allowance should be increased by 20%. Many of those who depend on social welfare payments now do not get the fuel allowance, because a person has to be on it for a certain amount of time. If a person is on a benefit payment, for example, the person does not get the fuel allowance at all. That is wrong. People should get an increased fuel allowance. More generally, social welfare and pension rates should be raised to the level that it takes everybody out of the poverty trap. That is what we proposed in our budget.

On the specific area of energy, as the Minister of State knows, we believe we should control the price of energy to prevent profiteering. We brought forward a Bill in 2024 precisely to that end, which, needless to say, the Government does not support. The energy companies have enjoyed an absolute bonanza in recent years. They have benefited spectacularly from the cost-of-living crisis that has crucified ordinary working people and seeing their profits go through the roof. It is true that ESB profits are slightly down on the astronomical levels they were enjoying in previous years, but they are still astronomical profits. Last year, profits of €446 million were made, and there were similar increases for all energy providers in recent years. The companies doing well out of the cost-of-living crisis are driving approximately one third of our population into energy poverty. However, the Government refuses to do anything about it. In fact, the Government provides a subsidy for them via the pockets of those affected by energy poverty, rather than address the profiteering itself. The once-off payments the Government is giving people will undoubtedly be better than nothing at all, given the inflated bills people will have to face over the winter months, but they do not address the underlying problem. When someone asks why energy prices are higher in this country than anywhere else, the answer is the deregulation of the energy sector in this country.

As I mentioned, we are now paying twice as much for electricity as the EU average, and 50% more on gas, but before we removed the not-for-profit mandate of the ESB and deregulated the sector we had the lowest electricity and energy costs in Europe. The promise that deregulation, competition and privatisation would deliver lower electricity and energy costs turned out to be a complete lie. The opposite happened. Since deregulation, privatisation and the removal of the not-for-profit mandated ESB, the cost of electricity and energy in this country has risen steadily and reached stratospheric levels during the height of the cost-of-living crisis in recent years. It imposed terrible hardship on some of the poorest, worst-off and most vulnerable people in this country. We should reverse that and take the energy sector back under full public control. We should run it as it was done in the past on a not-for-profit basis, because providing people with energy, the means to heat their homes and so on should not be a privilege. There should not be a situation where people are afraid to turn on the heating or use too much hot water in case the bills get out of hand. That is the reality of this situation. That is the human reality. The Minister of State and I know that when we knock on doors in the coming weeks or whenever the election is called, we will meet many people, particularly older vulnerable people, who will be afraid to have showers or turn on the heating when they need it and will be shivering in the cold because of the fear that the energy bills they get will be unpayable, even with these two credits. That is the issue we need to address. We should not have vulnerable and older people living in fear of just keeping their houses warm or having hot water. We could do that if we used the money and resources available for us to take the energy sector back fully under public ownership and run it on a not-for-profit basis. My God, now more than ever, we have the resources that would allow us to do that.

See this speech in context