Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator McDowell for giving us a brief overview of his next column in The Irish Times.

I raise first the electricity security review. I welcome that the Government is supporting a non-commercial liquefied natural gas, LNG, terminal as opposed to a commercial one. That is very welcome for our carbon emissions targets.

My main focus and the area I would like to address is the revelation shared by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, yesterday at my request that almost one quarter of households relying on gas are now in arrears and a staggering 56% of businesses in the State that use gas are now grappling with late payments. The period from July to September saw a doubling of companies falling behind. What is even more troubling is that these costs will be inevitably passed on to consumers because most of the non-domestic gas users are those who are in hospitality and retail. This will translate to an increased financial burden on hard-working families, whether they directly rely on gas or not.

The situation in the electricity market is much better, with 12% of households and 15% of businesses in arrears. While the Government may point to the energy credits as its solution, the statistics I have received paint a very different picture. The credits do not apply to gas customers, and for electricity customers, despite the payments, there are now thousands more households in arrears compared with the same period last year. The credits were simply too little for many households. It is a concerning trend. It is a step forward but two steps back.

In a lack of awareness by the Government, the energy credits are now smaller this year, even though we are by no means out of the crisis when it comes to the cost of energy use. Ireland is among the countries where those energy prices are coming down slowest. We cannot escape that fact. Energy prices are still exorbitant. Energy companies are still reaping massive profits and enjoying windfalls. The legislation we will approve today for early signature does not adequately tax that windfall because it does not go back to the point when the really excessive profits were being made. We have excluded that period. The Government's decision not to accept our amendments to capture those excessive profits was highly regrettable.

The other thing we need to do is in the long term. Ever since Ireland liberalised its electricity and energy markets, we have seen prices go up. We have gone from being one of the cheapest to one of the most expensive countries in Europe for energy. We urgently need an energy regulator that has the teeth to bring the big energy companies to heel. I encourage the Government to adopt Sinn Féin's legislation to bulk up the regulator and give it additional powers to oversee hedging and investigate instances of anti-competitive behaviour.