Mary Lou McDonald: Millions Face Energy Hikes While Government Stands By

Go raibh maith agat, Taoiseach, tomorrow is an important day. It provides a serious test for government. Tomorrow more than 1 million households will be hit with hikes in gas and electricity prices. Customers of Electric Ireland, the country's largest electricity supplier, and of Uno Energy face increased bills. These increases range from between 8% to 11%, sharp increases that will heap more pressure on people. The hikes will kick in, Taoiseach, as households deal with rising rent, increasing food prices, expensive back-to-school costs, and that's before we mentioned the sky-high cost of car insurance and indeed childcare. You see the bills keep coming, they keep going up and up, and people are fed up from being ripped off. I want to remind you of something, Taoiseach, and that is that Irish households already pay the highest electricity prices in the European Union. On average we pay more than 500 euros more a year than our European neighbours. We already, as you know, have record numbers unable to pay their energy bills with more than half a million household accounts in arrears. So that's the context, that's the backdrop, that's what families are facing as these new hikes come at them tomorrow, and this will hit hard-working families, Taoiseach, people who work every hour they can, do everything they can to build a good life for themselves and for their families, but no matter what they do it seems a constant uphill battle, a constant rip-off. These are the families that are squeezed and squeezed and squeezed, and here's the worst of it, Taoiseach, you've known that these hikes were coming for weeks because the increases were announced at the end of May, so you've had more than a month to act, to step in to protect people, but true to form you've done nothing at all. Energy has to be affordable for people, we need to get costs under control and end the rip-off, we have to support people while the costs are so high. As Taoiseach, you should rein in the energy companies who are making massive profits, you should reinstate energy credits because your job is to take action to ease the pressure on people and families. So can I ask you Taoiseach, why are you allowing this scandalous profiteering to go unchecked? Why are you content to sit back and allow more than a million households to take the hit? The uncertainty, stress and pressure you ask people to live with isn't right, it's not fair and people deserve better. On Lá Mháireach, Beidh Bílaí Leachtraicais agus Gáiseamhéidhú go géir, de níos mó na miliún teawlaí. Curchaí sé níos mó brú ar theabhlaí a tá strachalt go dona thanna féin. Cad a tá an ríochas cunéanamh faoi seo? See this comes down to choices Taoiseach. You should choose to step up, to have the backs of households faced with these energy price hikes, to take action, to rein in the energy companies. You should provide people with the support they need here and now and that means intervening directly and providing the energy credits that households need. Will you make these choices Taoiseach? Dúist beidh ar mhóireamh ar ródh, ar a bhfíom go bhfuil deachraichtí an, go bhfuil taghlíog fíomh brú, maith agus leis an gostas marachtáile, go tháireadh díosca an cogadh in Irán, agus sléir go raibh drochionachair ag an gogadh séin, ar praiseine, agus tá sé sin sa léir. Ach tá anach idéntidh an ríochas, chun an brú séin aísealú, agus cár agus tá chíoch do chórt do ghaoine, agus i nair o na blíona, beic suas le bulúin níos mó chur ar fáil a gwaing, go bhfuintir na tíra, agus tá sin seachas an méid a chur amhar ar fáil i góthéix an chána sinéis i stéiní a bhuigh a gwaing To say at the outset, Deputy, that families have been under pressure in respect of the cost of living issue. And it's the cost of living issue that has been exacerbated by very significant events over the last number of years, not least the exit from COVID, supply chain inflationary crisis and the spiral that followed that, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the energy crisis that followed that, the tariff situation in the United States and of course the war in the Middle East between the United States and Iran, which led to the largest ever supply shock in terms of fuel and consequential increases in fuel prices. And in the first instance, Budget 26 provided a lot of significant supports. First of all, we had the increase in the core rates. We had the very significant increases in child support payments, which helped families with children on the lowest incomes possible. And record allocations were made in respect of those payments. The fuel allowance, meaning that, for example, a lone parent family with one child would see an increase of nearly 9% or 1,800 euros in payments from the department as a result of the budgetary decisions. A two adult household, up to 2,300 increase in payments as a result of those budget decisions. And then you can take other measures we took in terms of the free hot school meals, in terms of free primary books and free school books, in terms of a lot of charges we took out of the health service to facilitate families in particular. And these measures were all with a view to helping families deal with the crisis. We have reduced VAT and kept the VAT on electricity charges down to 9% and we'll do that out to 2030. And you said we did nothing. We introduced a special package then of about 775 or 755 to 771 million euro package to alleviate the pressures on people, on the transport sector, on the food production sector. And we reduced, we took 32 cents off diesel, 27 cents off petrol and 7.4% of MGO and we deferred the carbon tax increase to the 14th of October. These were very substantial measures. Now we've taken a decision to extend those out and also to reduce them on a graduated basis, which basically means the cost of that is about 255 million. So you're looking now at an intervention above and beyond the budget of close to 1 billion euros. Now that isn't doing nothing. That is a significant intervention by any yardstick, probably one of the highest across the European Union. And we want to do further measures in the budget that will alleviate the pressures on families and on workers in particular, in terms of the tax burden on workers and in terms of supporting pensioners and supporting carers and those with disabilities. And we want to use our resources in a focused and targeted way in the forthcoming budget, which we will do. Well you see Taoiseach, it's not enough simply to agree with me that households are under incredible pressure. And far from intervening to assist people with their energy bills, you in fact took away the very thing that was the support to households. You removed energy credits. So rather than intervening to assist, you intervened and made things worse. You failed to rein in the energy companies that are turning huge profits. And people, you know, work very, very hard and will pay their way. Everybody realises that that has to happen. But they are simply fed up with being constantly, constantly ripped off. And they ask themselves, why is everything here so much more expensive? Why is that the case? Why is it that Irish households, Irish families have to pay more consistently for their energy? And I'm putting the question to you today Taoiseach, that more than a million households will be asking themselves tomorrow when they face yet another hike in their electricity and gas prices and bills. They're asking, what's the government doing to put a stop to the gallop of the engineer at the end energy companies? And what is government doing to step in and assist these households as they struggle, as you have acknowledged? First of all, in terms of energy companies, I think there is, I mean, the energy companies were quite quick to put up the prices at the time of the issues in terms of the commodity markets arising from the war between the US and Iran. And we would like, we would have to see comparable decreases as the commodity prices reduce and as that feeds into the Irish market. We have had reductions, significant reductions in terms of energy prices, but they need to go much, much further than they have. And if you look at the, we have nominally the highest EU electricity prices, about the fifth when adjusted for affordability and so forth. We have a heavy gas dependence. That's a significant factor in the pricing of our energy. We have a grid isolation, we have small market scales. The fundamental problem we have is an over-reliance on fossil fuels and on gas as our source. And we need to move more decisively to renewables and through the warmer home schemes and the retrofitting schemes we're empowering people to deal more effectively on a long-term basis with the cost.