Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes. The Minister of State's response is deeply disappointing. Senator Higgins has made a very strong argument in favour of our amendments. On the one hand we are using low usage as a metric in the context of a low-usage charge but at the same time, it is not a good enough metric when it comes to trying to exclude people who have means and are clearly not in urgent need of this measure. That is deeply disappointing.

Amendment No. 6 covers the hypothetical circumstances to which the Minister of State referred, including where people move into a property that was vacant for a while and have low usage as a result. Such people are protected by the proposed resolution mechanism. The Minister of State is being overly cautious in not accepting these amendments. He says that the Government is trying not to exclude anybody who might fall into the net but we have already allowed for that with a very low 500 kW per hour threshold and the dispute resolution mechanism. However, the same approach was not applied by the Government when it came to a single MPRN for halting sites. Halting sites were excluded and have not received a retrospective payment, eight months later. There does not seem to be the same attitude taken to the "What about?" arguments and all of the nuances that exist.

It is disappointing that the Minister of State is not going to accept our amendments and that the Government is prepared to stand over the fact that householders who do not need this payment, who have multiple properties and are sitting on vacant properties in the middle of a housing crisis, are going to benefit from the electricity credit scheme.