Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I welcome the opportunity to raise this matter. There was a debate on it in the immediate aftermath of the great surge in prices. I expected that there was going to be a set of proposals from the Government to help people to respond quickly to the challenges they faced. I will point towards a number of things that could be done immediately. I would like to see the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, take these up with his colleagues.

The first relates to the 1.5 million homes that will not be reached by the retrofitting programme in the next ten years. We should ensure that all of those houses, or as many of them as possible, get heat controls installed if they have inadequate attic insulation and if the cavity walls can be done. The 80% grant is welcome but we need a serious wave to confront this issue. We should extend the 80% grant to heat controls. The reality is that we could save up to 25% of the energy use in these homes. For these poorly insulated and poorly heated homes, this would represent 2 tonnes of carbon per home per year. That is an exceptional opportunity for us and we are not grabbing it with the determination I believe is warranted.

The second thing I will mention is that we have rolled out, at public expense, 750,000 smart meters and intend to have another 1 million installed by the end of this year. They are not being used to cut the cost of electricity for those who have them. That is simply not happening. There is an offer to homes but it is not being taken up. We need to move again with a sustained campaign to get that opportunity taken up. I reckon that could result in very significant savings. Even if only 10% of energy consumed, which is 4,500 kWh, was switched from fossil fuel-generated energy to renewable energy, the impact on our carbon footprint would be very significant. We would be switching from a kWh that costs 500 g of carbon to one that costs 0 g.

The third thing relates to electric vehicles, EVs. From the latest figures, we see that 20% of people are now buying electric cars. This figure has doubled in the last 12 months. That trend is going to continue but there is an obstacle standing in the way, which is the roll-out of public chargers. Despite three years of access to a €5,000 grant, the councils have not installed one EV charger in a public place.

They should be targeting areas, like those in all of our constituencies, where people do not have their own driveways. They should install chargers in the lamp poles and parking kerbs to allow those people to buy EVs. Even if that led to only a 2% increase in the number of cars sold, each one of those is 3 tonnes less carbon. This is low-hanging fruit. It is a real opportunity we could seize. Such chargers do not have the complication of a deep retrofit and they are available to very wide groups of people. They would be visible and tangible evidence this is something that needs to be done now and not put off until a one-stop shop comes to town. These are things that can start the momentum and give communities a chance to build from the bottom up.

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this important topic. I will begin by outlining recent price developments and the Government response and then I will discuss smart metering, EV policy and the Government's Reduce Your Use campaign.

The most immediate factor affecting electricity prices in Ireland is the continuing upward trend in international gas prices, where we are a price taker. Gas prices have been rising steadily since March 2020 and were further exacerbated following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This feeds directly through to retail electricity as the wholesale price of electricity correlates strongly with the price of gas. The Government is very aware of the impact on households of increasing electricity costs. In addition to measures taken in budget 2022, the Government has announced a €505 million suite of measures to mitigate cost-of-living increases, including a credit payment to all domestic electricity accounts, additional fuel allowance payments amounting to €225, a new targeted €20 million scheme for the installation of photovoltaic panels for households that have a high reliance on electricity for medical reasons and a reduction in VAT from 13.5% to 9% on gas and electricity bills from May to October. In addition, response 6 of the national energy security framework charges the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, with implementing a package of measures to enhance protections for financially vulnerable customers and customers in debt by quarter 3, ahead of the next heating season. Furthermore, in this fuel allowance year recipients received a total of €1,139 compared to €735 in 2020-21 and €756 in 2019-20. This includes the €5 weekly increase announced in budget 2022 and an additional €225 announced in 2022.

I turn to smart meters. Citizen participation in the clean energy transition is essential to meeting our ambitious climate targets. The infrastructure needed to empower citizens to become active energy consumers is smart metering. Action 22 under the national energy security framework, led by the CRU and ESB Networks, aims to leverage the roll-out of the smart metering programme by providing electricity customers with access to their data, thus enabling greater citizen participation. The CRU will also examine charges within its remit to ensure the differential between peak and off-peak tariffs provides the opportunity for electricity customers to save money by moving some consumption to off-peak hours.

On heat controls and reducing consumption, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, operates a number of energy-efficiency upgrade schemes on behalf of the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. Support for heating controls is available under the better energy homes scheme. All homeowners whose homes were built and occupied before 2011 can apply for the €700 grant to upgrade their heating controls. The Government has also launched a new nationwide public information campaign, Reduce Your Use, to promote and encourage energy-efficiency and highlight the range of government supports that are available to households and businesses to help to lessen the impact of rising costs.

The Government is deeply committed to its climate action plan goal of having nearly 1 million EVs on the road by 2030. The Government's draft EV charging infrastructure strategy 2022-25, which is currently out for public consultation, promotes the roll-out of publicly accessible charging points for EVs. It focuses on meeting the needs of EV owners who are unable to charge their vehicles at home, as well as offering top-up charging at destinations and on major routes. Work is currently being progressed to expand the EV home charger grant to include shared parking in apartment blocks and similar developments. The Department of Transport is working closely with the SEAI and expects a scheme for apartments to open in the near future.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I am disappointed by the Minister of State's lack of urgency. With regard to EVs, he is saying work is under way to look at the needs of estates that do not have driveways and multiple units that do not have charging points beside their car parking areas. This has been an obvious defect. We have had a grant in place for three years for the councils to put them into lamp poles or onto the side of the road, but not one council has taken it up. There needs to be a sense of urgency that councils have a responsibility for climate action plans. They are all producing plans but they are sitting on their hands when it comes to these practical measures.

The heat controls are not accessible through the 80% grant, even though a manufacturer I know claims a 25% reduction in heat use can be achieved in any home - no matter what the household is using, it can achieve that reduction. That is real, tangible change. I reckon, just on the back of the envelope, that if we rolled out a significant programme to those homes and reached even a third of them we would save 5 million tons of CO2. That is not far off 10% of our total carbon emissions. That is something we could target. We could do the same with the 1.75 million smart meters. If they even took 0.3 megatonnes off their electricity - if they reduced it by 0.3 megatonnes - you would have another 3 million tonnes by activating just half of those smart meters.

The same is true of pushing up the EV purchasing rate. They now pay for themselves over their lifetime, so we are not asking people to incur a big penalty by going to EVs. They are actually saving money for themselves. I ask the Government to look at these easier measures that are more accessible to wide numbers of people. To confront the climate crisis, we need everyone to have the sense that they are part of it and not waiting five or ten years for the big project to come to town.

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this important matter and for introducing increased urgency into our challenge. The Government accepts that consumers are currently facing volatility in energy prices due to a particular spike in international gas prices. It has taken action to address this by using the tax and social welfare system. This includes measures such as the fuel allowance increase, a credit payment to all domestic electricity accounts and a reduction in VAT on gas and electricity bills, as mentioned.

Other measures include the wider package of energy-efficiency supports, including from the SEAI, that make it easier and more affordable for homeowners to undertake home energy upgrades for warmer, healthier and more comfortable homes with lower energy bills. Changes to the warmer homes scheme involve a significant increase in the number of free energy upgrades for those most at risk of energy poverty. For those not eligible for free upgrades, grants for cavity wall and attic insulation have more than tripled. These are highly cost-effective upgrade measures that can be deployed rapidly and at scale this year. It is expected that these works will pay back in between one to two years in most houses. However, the best long-term approach for Ireland to reduce consumers' exposure to volatility on international wholesale energy markets is to invest in energy-efficiency, in renewable energy and in interconnection with the UK and the EU to deepen the internal energy market. I understand planning permission was agreed yesterday for the interconnector between Ireland and France.

I will finally outline the role of the CRU. The CRU was assigned responsibility for the regulation of electricity and gas retail markets under the Electricity Regulation Act and subsequent legislation. The CRU is responsible for the co-ordination of the smart meter programme. The Deputy will note the CRU is accountable to a joint committee of the Oireachtas, not the Government or the Minister, for the performance of its functions. He may also wish to note the CRU provides a dedicated email address for Oireachtas Members as well.

On local authorities not taking up the grant on EV chargers, I thank the Deputy for highlighting that. They are certainly not doing it in adequate numbers. In my own area, the local authority is putting in EV chargers. They may not be accessing the grants but they are putting them in. They are not putting in enough of them but there is some action happening on the ground in my area at least.