Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate all the successful candidates in the Six-County local elections. It was an historical election for Sinn Féin, which is now the largest party in local government in the North. There has been a clear message from the electorate that people want to see the assembly back up and running. I encourage all the political parties to work hard to make that happen and for the Irish and British Governments to do the same.The other issue I want to raise is energy poverty. I have just come from a meeting of the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action at which we heard from representatives of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Social Justice Ireland and Friends of the Earth on the stark reality of energy poverty in Ireland. It is really important that we talk about this now, when it is off the agenda, as such. It is vital that we start to prepare for the coming winter. The representatives of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul told us that there has been a 40% increase in the number of calls to the society's services, that one in ten households is now in arrears with a utility bill and that one in five gas customers is now in arrears. There are 377,000 households in energy poverty in this country. I therefore call for a debate in this House on whether the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, is adequately resourced and has sufficient powers to regulate energy markets properly. We are aware that it currently does not have powers to manage standing charges. No matter whether people are reducing their energy consumption, through either efficiency or pure necessity because they cannot afford to use their electricity or heating, they are still being punished by their providers because the standing charges are going up. There is no transparency regarding how companies decide on the value of the standing charges. This is in direct conflict with our climate action objectives. We are trying to encourage people to reduce energy consumption. They should be incentivised, not penalised, to do so.

A report in today's Irish Independentshows that, despite the fact that wholesale energy costs have dropped by 42.5% by comparison with this time last year, customers are not seeing their bills decrease to the same level. Ireland continues to have the highest unit price, almost double the EU average. It is interesting that the chairman of the Consumers Association of Ireland, Mr. Michael Kilcoyne, has stated the issue of the regulation of energy prices needs to be revisited in this country and that we need to have far greater control over what people are forced to pay by their providers.

I echo the calls by DCU economics professor Edgar Morgenroth, who has called for the CRU to have greater oversight of the hedging policy of electricity companies. Now that it is the summer, when people are getting a little bit of a reprieve on their energy bills, this House should have a debate on whether the CRU is fit for purpose.