Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I welcome today's statements. Households and businesses have been through a brutal energy shock. Russia's invasion of Ukraine weaponised gas, drove up wholesale prices and exposed how dependent Europe had become on imported fossil fuels. Prices have come down from the 2022 peak but nobody at home feels as if the crisis is over. Prices are still too high and people are anxious opening their emails or the envelope with the latest bill. To be fair, the Government did not stand idly by and this must be acknowledged. It put in place four rounds of electricity credits, worth €3.3 billion, cut VAT on energy and gas to 9%, expanded and increased the fuel allowance and targeted extra protections for vulnerable customers, including the disconnection moratorium over winter months. It is now putting significant resources behind long-term solutions, such as record funding for retrofitting, a major expansion of the warmer homes scheme and billions in planned investment in the grid and offshore renewables.

We have to be honest about the structural problems. For far too long, we relied on cheap imported gas and assumed the market would always deliver. At European level, the marginal pricing system meant that when gas prices went crazy, everything did. Here at home, political choices in recent years, especially by the last Minister, did not give security of supply the priority it deserved. There was a failure to deliver properly on storage, on flexible backup and on planning the grid we actually need. The breathing space brought by the rounds of energy credits was not used effectively, in my opinion, to deliver the necessary structural change. However, the opportunity now is to move from a politics of scarcity to the politics of abundance. As a nation, we must embrace this change. Off the west coast, for example, we have the potential for almost limitless clean power if we can get the planning, the grid and investment prices right. Cheap, abundant renewable energy is the single best industrial policy, climate policy and cost-of-living policy we can pursue as a country. That means acting in the common good. Communities that host wind farms or live beside data centres, especially large ones, must see tangible benefits, from district heating schemes to local amenities and community dividends. In return, though, the State must be willing to defend the common good against the narrow and vested interests that try to block every project. If every project is blocked, nothing changes. Like some other unnecessary interventions I have highlighted in this House before, this ultimately undermines public support for the transition away from fossil fuels and is deeply counterproductive. If we get this right, Ireland can move from being a price-taker at the end of a gas pipeline to being a clean energy powerhouse, cutting bills and emissions and strengthening our energy sovereignty.

I thank the Minister of State and acknowledge his work since taking office. I encourage him and his colleagues to accelerate efforts to take the necessary action in the common good to deliver clean, abundant and cheap energy for Irish consumers and businesses.

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