Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to highlight an issue I have been raising in the Seanad for a long time now, together with lots of other people, namely, the number of households living in fuel poverty in the State. It is now at pandemic levels. We have a serious issue where people living in very vulnerable households are moving into and staying in fuel poverty.

I ask the Seanad this morning to support me in my quest to insist that the Government would mandate energy producers to reduce the wastage of energy. Currently more than €300 million worth of energy is wasted. Renewable energy is wasted by not being utilised in the State. When there is excess energy or wind power in the system, the wind turbines are turned off. We need to be able to utilise that power and that energy. We need to make sure that the Government will work with the Commission for Regulation of Utilities and work with EirGrid to insist that they work with EnergyCloud, which is a not-for-profit company that works with vulnerable households. EnergyCloud has the capability to direct this wasted energy, quite literally, into their hot tanks so that in the morning, these vulnerable households would have a hot tank of water for free. It is an absolute disgrace that we are wasting energy in this country and that we are not diverting it into the tanks and the homes of the people who really need it.