Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)

Understood. I thank the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach. However, this needs to be called out and I have asked the Minister before to start looking seriously at ways we can reintroduce some level of regulation of energy prices beyond network tariffs. I am not suggesting that is easy but there are carve-outs in EU competition law that allow for price regulation in order to protect customers. We should be exploring these options and I will provide some context for this request.

Under EU energy market rules, our electricity and gas markets have been fully liberalised. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, judged competition to be effective in the electricity market in 2011 and in the gas market in 2014. The ESB, via Electric Ireland, still holds a large market share by virtue of its once-monopolised position but some time ago the CRU deemed that competition had developed to an extent that it judged that it was effective enough to protect consumers and keep prices down. Once that happened, EU rules meant it could no longer justify blanket price regulation and so regulations were lifted. If we look to the North, however, Power NI is a former monopoly provider, similar to how the ESB was here in the South. As Power NI still holds a very large share of the domestic market, its tariffs are regulated by the Utility Regulator to ensure that customers are protected and that prices remain fair. That was true even prior to Brexit, when EU competition law applied in the North, because the European Commission accepted the case that there were less competitive dynamics in the North and regulation of Power NI’s tariffs were continued as a public service measure.

This poses a question for us. Have the competitive dynamics that enabled the liberalisation of our energy markets back in the 2010s been a success? Have they delivered better prices and a better service for households? I would find it hard to argue that they have. Competition has not delivered better and fair prices for consumers. Instead, it seems that energy companies have given up on the idea of competing with each other, and a price hike by one gives an excuse for a price hike to the rest. All of these matters I am raising are on the public record. The profits of these energy companies are on the public record. There is nothing wrong with calling them out here. As I have said, it appears to be much more than a coincidence that they are all raising their prices at the same time, or one after another. They are almost using it as an excuse. When one raises their prices, another uses that as an excuse to also raise their prices. This is hardly the sign of a well-functioning and competitive market.

Under EU electricity and gas directives, price regulation is allowed in exceptional circumstances, such as when competition is not working, or indeed, in order to protect vulnerable customers. We are very much approaching the point where we can claim on the basis of the evidence we are seeing at the moment that competition in the Irish energy markets has failed. The Minister should be looking to exploit those exceptional circumstances provisions in the EU rules in order to rein in energy companies and making the case for this to the European Commission.

I would also like to briefly raise the CRU’s draft price review six. It is pretty outrageous that it is proposing that we increase costs on households while giving a discount on energy prices to data centres, the same data centres putting our energy system under enormous pressure – a 412% increase in electricity usage in the past ten years – leading to increases in costs for ordinary households. The Government knows this. The Secretary General in the Department of public expenditure has said that soaring electricity demand is largely attributable to data centres. We know that demand is expected to grow to 30% of our national energy use by 2030. This follows the Secretary General in the Minister’s own Department of energy saying that the Government must choose between the power demands of data centres and building homes.

Ordinary, working families are paying for this and, quite simply, it is wrong. The billions of euro now thankfully being poured into updating and upgrading our grid are being used to accommodate these large energy users like data centres. It is being paid for by households. I introduced a Bill last week, the Electricity Regulations (Climate Action and Connection to Distribution and Transmission Systems) Bill 2025, which attempts to deal with part of this issue. It would give the CRU the power to ensure that data centres generate their own on-site renewable energy, which would compliment draft proposals on regulation published by the CRU earlier in the year. Essentially, this will mean that for every megawatt that data centres take from the grid, they have to give back a megawatt of clean, renewable energy that they have generated themselves - in effect, neutralising their energy demands.

Of course, there is also the climate element and the impact data centres have on our emissions. The massive energy demands of these data centres means that they guzzle through fossil fuels and they are taking basically all of the relatively small amount of renewable energy we are currently producing. That is renewable energy that could be used to decarbonise our homes, reduce bills or electrify our public transport. My Bill would ensure that ends, and that data centres cannot build any new fossil-fuel infrastructure, but rather provide their own renewable energy and contribute towards our efforts to decarbonise our economy and our public services.

I will conclude by reiterating that this issue – alleviating the struggle that people are facing with soaring energy costs and the cost-of-living crisis more generally – is about political choices. It was a political choice to give a massive VAT cut to burger barons and big developers while denying vulnerable households supports like the energy credits they have desperately relied on over the past couple of years. It is a political choice to allow energy companies to run riot and I ask the Minister to seriously consider my proposal today.

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