Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am convinced someone is trying to sabotage me because we keep changing the order every week. We are here this morning because it has been impossible not to notice the welcome news in the newspapers that €50 is going back into every household's electricity accounts as a result of an error made by ESB Networks.The bigger question is as to why domestic customers were subsidising large energy users for 12 years. In 2009, the Government gave an instruction to the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities, CRU, to implement a subsidy on a permanent basis. The instruction was for domestic users to subsidise the network tariffs of large energy users. Large energy users include data centres and pharmaceutical companies. Those entities are very profitable. The plan was basically an instruction to the CRU to rebalance things in favour of large energy. It was allowed to go on for 12 years and was couched in language about protecting jobs because of the financial crash. Many households were on their knees at that time and could have done without subsidising these profitable companies, but it happened.

The CRU allowed it to continue for 12 years. The CRU notified the Government that it had made a decision last year that it would unwind this subsidy. I have asked the Minister of State to come before the House because the Department of his predecessor, An Taoiseach, made a submission to the CRU on the back of the decision to unwind the subsidy that domestic households were paying to large energy users. The Department criticised the decision and said that the CRU was acting contrary to a ministerial direction. It said that the decision was punitive to industry and big business and that it would probably cost big businesses approximately €70 million. What the Department did not say is that it cost households €70 million and that the position in this regard needs to be redressed.

Does the Minister of State support the view of his predecessor and the Department that the subsidy domestic households are paying towards large energy users should continue indefinitely as a permanent measure, as the Government of 2009 indicated to the CRU it wanted to see happen, or does he support his other colleague in Government, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, who stood up in the Dáil last week and claimed credit for the removal of the subsidy by saying he had instructed the CRU to remove it, because it was unfair, after 12 years? Which does he support? Does he support the Minister, who is trying to claim credit for putting money back in people's pockets, when it was us who were chasing this for months, or does he support the view of the Taoiseach and that of is own Department to the effect that this is a punitive measure and that the average domestic household should continue to subsidise large energy users such as Amazon, Google and big pharmaceutical and agribusiness companies, which are all very profitable, and foot the bill for them in this regard in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis? That is the question for the Minister of State. Does he support the view of the Minister or that of the Taoiseach with regard to who should be paying this subsidy?