Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank all Deputies who made contributions on Second Stage of this electricity credits Bill. We will be back later today to discuss this on Committee Stage. I will address various points that have been made. They have been constructive and I will not try to play politics with them. We are trying to deal with energy poverty, which is more important than scoring points off one other. I recognise many constructive points were made and genuine questions asked about why things are the way they are and whether they can be changed.

Deputy Gould referred to people who did not receive the energy credit last year and should have been on the vulnerable customer register. He asked what can be done about them. People may contact TDs saying they are not getting the energy credit and wanting to be told what can be done. A number of people contacted me last year saying they did not qualify for one reason or another. All of them managed to get the credit in the end. That is my experience. Suppliers are required to actively promote the vulnerable customer register and the protection it offers. In the past year, between 2023 and 2024, the number of people on the register has increased by one third. There are now 90,000 people on it. If people who do not get the credit contact their energy supplier and explain the situation, they are highly likely to get it. They also have a right of appeal to the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities. It is most likely they will get the money if they genuinely were occupying the house at the time. I address that also to Deputy Murnane O'Connor, who raised the same question.

In terms of the warmer homes scheme, it is great to see Deputies on all sides understanding the connection between energy poverty and the need to retrofit our homes. Originally there was difficulty in getting take-up of the warmer homes scheme. There was not a lot of demand for retrofit, even in 2019, and there was less than €40 million available for the scheme. Next year we are providing €240 million. Within five years, we have multiplied the budget for the scheme sixfold. We have people waiting months for the scheme and that is because they recognise how valuable it is and want to retrofit. We need to target our retrofit money towards people in energy poverty. That is why the majority of the money goes towards those people. The majority of the money is split between the warmer homes scheme and the scheme for retrofitting council houses.

I remember promoting the retrofit for council houses scheme when I was a county councillor in 2019 and looking at what could be done to increase it. Somebody living in a council house is much more likely to need a retrofit than somebody who owns their own home. In 2019 there was €25 million available; this year there is €100 million available. There is a fourfold increase in the number of homes covered. We had 8,000 social homes constructed last year and are now targeting 10,000. All of those homes are being built to a high standard of insulation. That is many more people on low incomes or dependent on social housing living in warm homes. It is a thing to be recognised and celebrated.

Deputies have asked why we have such high electricity prices in Ireland. There are four main features. First is our lack of natural resources. We spend €1 million per hour on imported fossil fuels, which really costs us. Second, our geographic location as an island means all of our fuels need to be imported through subsea pipes or shipping. We lack natural resources but what was not taught to me in school was that we are the windiest country in Europe and have an incredible wind resource we are finally capitalising on, with 40% of our electricity coming from wind. In the near future, we will be generating much more electricity than we can use and selling it in various ways to the rest of the world. It is a prosperous and hopeful future. Third is the problem of having a small population, which means there is a small market for what we do. We also have a dispersed population. Those factors add to the cost of providing power but, when we become a country producing more electricity than we use and exporting it - we are already negotiating deals on selling electricity abroad - then our prices will be much lower as a result.

I will address comments from Deputy Nash. He asked about switching and rightly pointed out many consumers could save as much from switching electricity provider as they would get from electricity credits. In the first eight months of the year, 240,000 households switched provider. It is happening frequently. There was less of it during the energy crisis but, now that prices are coming down, people are switching provider more frequently. Almost a quarter of a million homes have switched and I would like to see more of that. Deputies should go out to their constituents and tell them to switch provider for a better deal and that they may be able to save as much money as they get from the electricity credits.

Deputy Whitmore and others pointed out that these credits are meant to be one-off, yet are happening frequently. This is the fourth time we have done it. In the first winter in which we provided electricity credits, there was €600 available; the second winter, €450; and this year, €250. We are scaling down the one-off payments for electricity credits because the price of electricity is coming down but it is still greatly elevated and much higher than it was a few years ago. It makes sense that we do not have a cliff-edge situation where people are left without power.

Deputy Whitmore also points out that providing people with solar power is probably a better long-term answer than giving them money directly into their accounts, which is true. The only constraint is the capacity of the number of people available to install. The number of registered installers has doubled in the past year. We had the largest number of solar panels installed in people's homes in a month in August - 3,500 in one month. We are having a solar revolution in Ireland: 1 GW of solar power was installed last year; 1.5 GW this year; 1.5 GW next year. We will reach 8 GW easily by 2030.

We are putting solar panels in every school. The first 1,000 schools have been reached. There are 4,000 schools in Ireland. The pilot project has gone very well, including in Deputy Whitmore's constituency of Wicklow. I look forward in the coming weeks to the next phase, wherein the remaining 3,000 schools will be done, including schools in my constituency of Dún Laoghaire. The reasons solar panels are so popular and doing so well are we removed VAT, not just on the solar panels but on the installation and batteries, we removed the requirement for planning permission, which makes it much easier to put them in, we mandated it be always possible to sell power back to the grid, which was not possible when we came into government, and we provided grants. The grants are being tailed off as the price of solar panels goes down but all those supports are changing the way people get power and giving them more energy independence.

Deputy Collins commented on the need to tackle energy poverty and she is absolutely right. We need to target our payments in that way and that is why we made changes in the budget to provide increases in the qualified child allowance, increases for children in the working family payment and increases in the disability and living alone allowances. All of those payments were targeted because they are linked with energy poverty. That was done in consultation with the ESRI. We asked the ESRI what were the demographics of people who tend to be in energy poverty and need to be compensated, and those are the people we targeted.

We also increased all welfare payments. These changes are permanent rather than once-off. There are a huge range of one-off payments to tackle the fact that energy prices are still high this winter, but there are also a range of payments targeted towards people which are permanent changes. As I said, the majority of our retrofit money is going towards people living on welfare payments or living in council housing.

Deputy Murnane O'Connor asked about people who have not qualified for the electricity credit in the past. If she engages with the supplier and talks to her constituent, she will be able to work it out. If that fails, she should contact me.

As to whether there is anything for tenants and renters, any tenant who has an electricity meter qualifies for this payment. There is a submeter scheme included within this legislation to directly address people who do not have their own electricity meter, for example, people living in bedsits where a meter is shared between several people.

I commend this Bill to the House.

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