Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I extend my gratitude and many seasonal happy returns for Christmas to Senator Scahill, his family and everyone in the Chamber this morning, in particular the amazing officials in the Houses of the Oireachtas who, when we think it is great to have an amazing late night emergency debate, are the ones who ultimately have to respond very quickly.

Every five years, CRU approves the spending plans of EirGrid and ESB Networks, which are the companies charged with designing, operating, building and maintaining the electricity grid. These companies can then recover these allowed costs from their customers in accordance with tariffs that are approved and monitored by CRU. The Senator will have seen the announcement earlier this week by CRU of price review 6, which covers spending by the grid companies for 2026 to 2030. This investment will deliver the resilience our energy system needs to withstand extreme weather events. The Senator spoke extremely eloquently in this Chamber and elsewhere on the impact of Storm Éowyn and other storms, in particular those affecting his home community of Roscommon.

These regulated network charges are billed from the grid companies to electricity suppliers rather than end customers. Electricity customers pay their supplier a tariff to cover the cost to the supplier of buying electricity from a generator and paying network charges to the grid companies. As mentioned, how the supplier splits its prices between a per unit tariff and a standing charge is a commercial choice for the supplier. Customers are free to switch between suppliers and competition between suppliers allows customers to make significant savings, and we always encourage competition in the market.

Where outages do occur, ESB Networks operates a network repair guarantee. It aims to restore supply within four hours after any interruption. If a customer is without power for 24 hours after ESB Networks is notified of a fault, domestic customers can claim €65 and business customers can claim €130. Customers can claim an extra €35 for every additional 12 hours they are without power. ESB Networks is not able to offer this guarantee in exceptional cases such as storms or extensive disruption to electricity supplies. However, I am sure the Senator will agree with me that ESB Networks responds to storms in an exemplary way.

The electricity and gas retail markets in Ireland operate within the European Union regulatory regime, wherein those markets are commercial, liberalised and competitive. Operating within this framework of responsibility for the regulation of electricity and gas markets is solely a matter for the CRU. It ended its regulation of retail prices in the electricity market in 2011 and in the gas market in 2014. Price setting by suppliers, including standing chargers or waivers, is, therefore, a commercial and operational matter for the companies concerned. I will refer the Senator to the area of the network repair guarantee, which may be a more appropriate model that could be considered, enhanced or improved to deal with the sort of issues he has so clearly laid out in the Chamber.