Barry Ward (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I understand in the context of the Ukraine war why this happened. I also understand why we put in place measures to protect people with the exceptional measures put in place in the previous two budgets. However, prices have remained high and there is no justification for it. Nobody can give me a reason I am satisfied with as to why they remain so stubbornly high. It is grossly unfair on the people of this country that we pay among the highest rates for energy in the European Union and without any good reason for it. Let us address this.

One of the ways we can address this, and reference has also been made to the renewables issue, is by bringing onstream renewable energy in this country. Offshore wind farms are an absolute obvious ask. It is shocking that we are not taking more energy from the wind and the waves that crash against the shores of this country. It is a crime we are not doing it. I welcome the infrastructure measures the Government announced today, which will reduce the opportunity for people to object to such plans. This is the right way to go about it. It should not be the case that someone can live in County Donegal and object to a wind farm off the coast of County Waterford when they have no locus standi and no basis to object to it. It is right that we change this. We need to do it even faster than what is proposed.

We need to have a situation where we are bringing onstream all of the renewables that are available to us and we need to speed up the work being done on the Celtic interconnector with Franc, so we can plug into a European energy market that will finally bring a little bit of competition to those people in this country who are running utility companies and who are, at the moment, as far as I can see, fleecing the ordinary consumer in Ireland. It is not acceptable and we need to change it. Yes, we need to put in place the infrastructure but the CRU needs to take responsibility for doing what it can in the short term and not hang around until the prices go up again, without any explanation or justification as to why that is.

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