Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)

When we are dealing with energy costs, we can start at a fairly obvious place. There are 180,000 in arrears on their gas bills and 300,000 homes in arrears on their electricity bills. That is 13% of households who cannot afford electricity and 26% who cannot afford gas. That is the reality. It would not be difficult for anyone to find out that people are facing severe issues related to this. It is not really shocking that the Government had information indicating people were facing into even greater costs than they were last year. We have all heard the figure of €321. That is a hell of a lot of money per year if you do not have it. We know where the State has absolutely failed. Energy credits were used and people understand how they work. The argument for them was much stronger on the basis of the information the Government had, which was received through freedom of information by Lynn Boylan MEP. We would all prefer if this was not the way we had to get information. I would like to get a bit more information about the targeted energy scheme plan the Government was looking at, but there is no sign of it.

I believe the terminology that has been used is that it would not be in the public interest to share this information. The people who cannot afford to pay their bills and those who are suffering even more as it gets colder are not going to be too impressed with that. We have to deal with the reality. In fairness, many have spoken about some of the issues that could be dealt with around why we have such huge energy costs. We have a Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, that does not have the powers it should have. We need to make sure we get all the information in relation to energy companies and that we do not just hear about hedging in a very generalised way. We need to get greater detail. The powers need to be provided. We need to deal with the issues of standing costs and network costs, and we really need to put pressure on energy companies that have absolutely gouged. This should not be a shock, however. As Deputy O'Rourke said, we absolutely failed to bring in windfall taxes when we had the crisis three years ago. It should have happened there and then.

We are going to talk about new energy sources. I have no problem in relation to having conversations on whatever technology. I would find it very difficult to talk about nuclear power without dealing with the issues of nuclear waste and talking about Chernobyl and Sellafield. However, we should be a wind power superpower at this stage rather than just using the term in this building. That has not happened and the reason it has not happened is that we have not got to grips with infrastructure, and the proposals today are just proposals. We will see how long it takes in relation to legislation but we need to see huge moves. People are suffering and we need to see delivery rather than just conversation.

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