Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I thank everybody who contributed to the debate. I thank some of the Opposition groupings that said they would support the motion.

I want to respond to a variety of the arguments used by the Government. I will start with what was the elephant in the room in the context of the speeches of the two Ministers of State who spoke, namely, the question of data centres. They spoke about energy usage and price rises. They correctly spoke about the predominant international factors in respect of those, but they did not make a single mention of the role of data centres. This industry is now consuming 11% of our electricity. It will consume perhaps 30% of our electricity by 2030. Moody's predicted at the end of 2018, and again in 2019, that if we continue on this road, which we have done, energy prices would rise as a consequence.

We have an incredible situation whereby the Government is repeatedly unable to give a commitment to people in a developed economy that there will not be blackouts. It cannot give that commitment. It is pointing in the opposite direction of its own commitments in terms of climate. It is attempting to go down an upward escalator by increasing our energy usage dramatically through the expansion of data centres while at the same time trying to move to renewable energy. What is the response of the Government to all of this? It is to say that there is no way it can touch data centres. Not just that, it is to double down on data centre development. It will proceed with the idea of designating them as strategic infrastructure, which means they can bypass the regular planning process. All of that will be disastrous for the environment and households.

It is not too late. The vote on our Bill to ban data centres will take place later today. It is the Green Party which holds the balance of power on this issue. If it had voted with the Social Democrats and the Opposition on the Social Democrats' motion on a moratorium, the motion would have passed. If the Green Party votes with us to ban the development of future data centres, that measure will pass later today. Does the Green Party, which is in government with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, put the interests of the big tech corporations first or does it put the interests of ordinary people, which coincide with those of the environment, first?

Unfortunately, everybody knows what the answer is going to be.

To get to the meat of the Government's argument, it is summed up in a particular paragraph from the speech of the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, who stated:

It is important to recognise that these price increases are not Government or even regulatory decisions. This is because price regulation ended many years ago. Suppliers compete with each other on prices and set their own prices accordingly, as you would expect [in a competitive, commercial, liberalised market].

That is the point. The Government hails the private market and the Minister of State indicated that the Government's position is that a liberalised market will bring down prices. The truth is that this has not happened. The truth is that the opposite has happened. The evidence for that is international. Despite this, the Government, including the Green Party, looks at the private market and the fact that it is delivering unaffordable price increases for ordinary people and says there is nothing it can do. The Minister of State, Deputy English, was reduced to encouraging people to go consumer price comparison websites and telling them how much they can save. The Government, which has the legal power to regulate prices and put in place a maximum price at the stroke of a ministerial pen, is reduced to advertising a few consumer switching websites. That is what the Government is now reduced to in its hailing of the market and its bowing before everything the market does, regardless of the consequences.

I double down on the point that the evidence is clear prioritisation is a disaster for the environment, the prices people pay and for workers. I refer to the Australian experience because I did not get a chance to do so earlier. Professor John Quiggin examined 20 years of pro-privatisation reform in his report Electricity Privatisation in Australia: A Record of Failure. He was able to compare very similar states across Australia with privatised and non-privatised networks. Price rises were highest in states with privatised electricity networks. Customers' dissatisfaction jumped, with complaints to the energy ombudsman in privatised states leaping from 500 per annum to over 50,000. "... Resources [were] ... diverted away from operational functions to management and marketing ..." While reliability declined, promised increases to investment efficiency have not occurred and real labour productivity has reduced. I could go on. It is exactly the same story here. The big profits generated have not been reinvested in a shift to renewable energy. Instead, those companies are prepared to hike up the prices and make ordinary people pay at this point.

I will conclude by going back to the basic point. People will die this winter if the Government does not take action to shield them from the impact of energy price rises. That is a fact. The Government, in its countermotion, is proposing to take no action whatsoever. That is its choice. There are many available options available to the Government to do something about this, that is, to shield people from the impact of energy prices rises so people do not have to make the choice between heating their house and food. The first action is very simple, namely, the introduction of maximum price caps. Government has the power to do it. It could do it right now and give immediate relief. The second action would be to not increase the carbon tax. At the very least, the Government should not heap the extra price rises it is imposing onto energy in the next budget. The third action would be to increase the fuel allowance by the amount the extra energy is going to cost for people, and extend it so people are able to access it. Last of all, the Government could move away from this disastrous model of privatisation. If we want to have a just, rapid, transition to a zero-carbon economy, we need public ownership and democratic planning in our energy sector.

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