Richard Boyd Barrett: Reclaim ESB, Stop Energy Privatization

Thanks, Chair, and apologies I wasn't here earlier to speak across in the Dáil and thanks to all of you for your submissions and contributions which I have read and just one thing I just was debating with the Taoiseach is about when it comes to energy costs is the question of deregulation and privatization of the energy sector and a lot of his narrative is around we need to develop renewable resources and I agree with that absolutely although I don't know what you think but I know the fact that even though we have significantly increased a proportion of our energy that is produced by renewable energy it hasn't done anything to bring down energy costs or electricity costs in fact they've gone up and they've gone up dramatically so there's not any evidence currently I would argue that developing our own energy resources actually brings price down and to me that's because of private ownership but I would be interested to hear your opinion but certainly like the argument I looked back sort of laughingly at some of the comments people like Eamon Ryan made for example when the not-for-profit mandate was removed from the ESB and he said competition is going to bring down price it's going to benefit the consumer and the exact opposite happened and the deregulation of the EU energy market saw prices jump across Europe but in Ireland they jumped much more than everywhere else at least from you know the figures I've seen so shouldn't we be saying as part of trying to kind of address the energy price hikes shouldn't we be saying privatization deregulation of the energy market has been a failure and that we need to bring the energy sector back into public ownership and return the not-for-profit mandate of the ESB like how do we how are we going to do the most good for the most people and it wouldn't necessarily be the fuel in our cars and our vehicles it would be our home energy that I would be really trying to target because you know as I have the latest stats which are not easy to get on the CRU website they're very very very difficult to find and arrears figures I know that they've only recently started to add in the value of the figures and I know I think I had because I was questioned about that I thought well it makes a difference whether you're 60 quid in arrears or 600 euro in arrears like the CRU regulate on behalf of the industry and the consumer is encouraged to shop around the consumer is under is expected to understand what's in their smart meter I have one I don't know what it is I don't know what it does I don't understand how any energy company can have 10 or 12 different tariffs and expect me to figure out what the best tariff is for me at any given time I think it is very very very difficult to navigate and we are going to have to have serious conversations about a post fossil fuel society what that's going to look like a lot of our renewable energy at the moment is going to data centers I was only looking recently actually yesterday just to see when we became electrified as a country because we can't imagine Ireland without electricity Bali Croy was the last place I think to be brought on on the grid which is close to where my family are from and in the west coast and it is the middle of nowhere we cannot imagine a world without electricity at this particular moment in time but how we manage and produce and create that electricity we still want the nice things we have how are we going to do that it is going to have to be a serious conversation about energy sovereignty you can see the weaponization of fossil fuels across the world now you can see the difficulties that are being placed upon consumers as you said we don't get our fuel from Iran but other people are getting their fuel from Iran and that is obviously causing difficulties in global markets for fuel the word crisis as well we're using that a lot in medical terms that's death or recovery that's the only two options after a crisis we've been in this now for quite some time and so for me that home energy piece is much more important than the I can get the bus you know me like I have to wait for an hour for a bus but I can get the bus but you know at that stage now where you have people I know who you're dealing with for whom putting on the immersion is a luxury item having a hot shower is a luxury item that is not the island with a budget surplus and a budget you know an island of full employment and to go back even to the point about wages your wages are only worth what they can get you to say that we are the top ten or the top two is irrelevant if I have the second best wage in Europe but it doesn't get me anything that's I think that argument you know can be kind of slightly moot and it really is a case of how far it goes social welfare goes nowhere anybody who thinks you can get by on 254 a week at the moment has never had to do it and they've never had to do it so I think for me it would definitely be a case of really really tackling the home energy sector as I said we've got like outrageous levels of arrears outrageous and I know maps are doing great work you're doing great work Protestant aid and cross care everybody's but again you look at the amount of money sloshing around the system there was billion spent in energy credits to still have thousands of people in home utility arrears I just think is is crazy it's absolutely crazy are you and trying to get control of the energy figures it is even more shocking than that because one of the things we don't have a lot of the customers we support and Michael Higgins would have the detail of how we support them through energy vote vouchers for pay-as-you-go a lot of them are on pay-as-you-go meters there their electricity runs out on a Monday or Tuesday we get emergency calls like they're look that they've no energy we have no they've no electricity in the meter we have no record of how many of that is happening on a weekly basis they we've asked constantly for the CRU it's one thing saying about arrears because people are and they give the rears and the disconnections but we don't have the really crucial figure how many people are self-disconnecting every Monday because they won't have money till they get Wednesday and that is a crucial figure and that's something that's not being provided by the CRU the other thing I would say is the CRU what you're talking about crisis the CRU should be monitoring it when we look at what the central bank did before the big financial crisis we talk about the lack of regulation of the central bank that allowed the financial crisis to happen we need the CRU to take up that regulatory role a lot stronger and a lot harsher and one of the points I would make because it's very relevant today on the 21st of the month we will all have to put in our lobbying returns and any interactions we have with you we'll have to note and that's the same with any public bodies whether it's the fisheries board or whatever board but the one boards that doesn't seem to have to have any lobbying is the CRU so we do not know how many suppliers are going in looking for regulation looking for changes and things looking for their voices to be heard and that's not recorded anywhere and I think that's the type of information that we need to start looking at the consumer protection code the central bank now it's about putting consumers first in your consumers best interest so the central bank will be looking for financial providers to put their consumers best interest first and I think it's exactly it should be exactly the same for the CRU yeah I don't know if you talked about it and again apologies if I'm going over ground cover before I come back in is wealth taxes and as a way of generating revenue the Mandani I haven't looked closely at it but Mandani now is claiming that he's raising quite a lot of money and doing some big things in New York I haven't looked into the details of it but certainly I think you'd probably agree I suspect you agree that we have gross inequality in the distribution of wealth in our society and that that's borne out every single year it with the central banks net household worth figures and how that's distributed and heavily concentrated among the very very small group so what do you say to proposals like those of Oxfam ourselves and others about taxing the multi millionaires basically as a way of generating tax rather than and maybe just comment on this as well there often ends up being a little bit of a divide-and-conquer I feel between the people who are sort of under the poverty welfare thresholds who desperately need support right because they're in poverty and they're really really struggling and they need support and then there's people who are just a bit over it often workers trade unionists who yeah but that rather than end up in a sort of either-or that we need to be supporting the majority whether they're under or over those thresholds and the people who could pay for but aren't really paying for it are the multi millionaires thank you very much I will just if I could just briefly just go back to the previous question yeah yeah and just in relation to the energy markets it's not something that I to be honest I I will be fully on top of but it is something that we are it was working with at European level through the European Trade Union Confederation and effectively under the European legislation electricity prices are determined too often by fossil fuels gas prices so and despite the whatever the cost of renewable energy these are not reflected in the price that ordinary consumers pay so we are we are developing proposals at European level to do that in relation to the wealth tax a hundred percent agree with you we've had a proposal for a wealth tax in our pre-budget submissions for a number of years but I would defer to dr. Tom McDonnell on this who is who has done some work on this or you come in I'm we're limited in time so I'll get a quick answer please well yes we can absolutely absolutely do a wealth tax at the NERI in collaboration with Oxfam developed a proposal and back in January there's also proposals on the NERI website I would encourage you to look at them but what we did was we looked at why wealth taxes have failed in other jurisdictions and developed a wealth tax which we think gets around around those issues and certainly a 1% wealth tax on the top 1% of households which is is not your average Joe so by any by any stretch we generate close to a billion annually so I think that's that's something that should be considered and I know the Commission on Tax and Welfare were keen to look at ideas for increasing taxes on capital more generally very very quickly on your point about energy prices I think it's important that we understand where we are we with the highest energy prices in Europe our energy prices have increased faster than the rate of inflation in Ireland so there is an issue specific to the energy market so I completely agree with you Deputy Boyd Barrett that the changes made in the 90s and 00s have been a failure frankly and we absolutely need to look at investing significant significantly more as a state in what is ultimately a natural monopoly to a large extent as a way to bring down those prices by reducing the impact of fossil fuels just briefly and thank you to deputy so a couple of points number one in relation to the renewed investments in your renewable energy not reducing prices it goes back to a point we have made and Tom has made as well if you're relying on private equity and private finance to do that they need a return within 10 to 15 years which obviously then feeds into the system the state should be making that investment and looking for a return over a 50-year period that is so that would you know address that issue again looking at the regulation of the market in terms of wealth taxes is you know we need to look at capital gains proposals within the Commission on taxation welfare be a good place to start and just finally Deputy Donoghue just to go back to a question you asked in terms of like two of the key issues that we could look at in the budget in terms of addressing some of these issues I suppose for social justice Ireland the first one is to index the social welfare system to a proportion of average earnings I mean that's crucial to do that long-term planning you're talking about in that budget to bonus planning as well and then obviously you're looking at the indexation of wages the second piece there is then a you know and a system and income protection system that's tapered in terms of against wages so you don't get that cliff edge fall off this deputy boy Barrett referenced and then finally looking at the issue of refundable tax credits for low-income households that come at a cost about 210 million euros at the moment so I think those key things should be part of a budget that looks at addressing income adequacy and where the pressures really are within the system thank you thank