Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Some Senators raised the surplus in the public accounts this morning. It comes as cold comfort to many families that are in arrears on their gas bills. At the end of December 2022, 139,785 domestic gas customers were in arrears. I am sure many Senators have constituents who are horrified by the large gas bills that are landing on their doorsteps. It was the subject of a commencement matter this morning. Gas bills are in the thousands of euros. Pensioners are having to face finding the money to heat their homes. I know people personally who are going cold for fear of turning on the gas. The temperatures are quite low even this week once the sun goes down. On foot of those figures in December, I asked the energy regulator for the quarter 1 figures of 2023. Unfortunately it was only in a position to provide figures for the first two months of the year, but those are terrifying. Between December 2022 and February 2023 an additional 12,491 household have fallen into arrears with their gas bills. There was nothing in the supports to provide for those households. That is a 9% jump in two months. It is now the case that 20% of the households that depend on gas to heat their homes are in arrears. What is the Government offering them? Fine Gael are running an online petition. Sign up and ask the gas suppliers to drop your bills. Fine Gael is in government. It needs to help people. An online petition? Come on, get real.

It could be tackling the price gouging we know is going on. We know hedging takes place but bills go up much quicker than they come down when the gas prices go down. We also need to give the regulator the powers to properly engage in the market and not just say "shop around".Many people are not capable of shopping around for various reasons. They might be forced to have direct debit bills or they might not have the capacity. They are left to their own resources. They cannot shop around. Equally, we need to give the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, the proper resources to do the job of a regulator. noteworthy.ierecently produced research that showed the CRU needs an additional 70 staff just to carry out its day-to-day activities. We need to properly resource the CRU. Perhaps some of the surplus could be put to that purpose. We need the Minister to engage with the regulator and to get the regulator to interact in the market. It is not good enough for it to be passive and we need our Government to lead and not be asking people to sign a petition to do the job it should be doing.