Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)

What else can be said? We have the most expensive electricity prices across the European Union. They are two thirds higher than the average, with the typical Irish household paying nearly €700 more per year. That is really what it is all about. There is a certain acceptance of our being an island and at the end of a line, but there are some very specific solutions that my colleagues, especially Deputy O'Rourke, have spoken about and hardly for the first time in this House.

It is fair to say the Government was very slow with a windfall tax. It really only happened when the EU came up with its particular one which only applied to oil and gas companies and not electricity companies so even when we did one, we did not do what was necessary.

We know we are talking about something across the board. We are talking about reforming the electricity market and that is decoupling wholesale gas from the price of electricity and redistributing network charges progressively. It is not the first time people have spoken about the absolute necessity of reforming the CRU. We know we need to regulate standing charges, hedging practices and anti-competitive behaviour. There is not much point in giving powers to a regulator without adequately resourcing them. This is not the first time we have spoken about that in this House.

I will bring up two particular points. The Minister spoke earlier about retrofitting and I make the argument that with regard to some of the houses that are being retrofitted that sometimes what happens is those with resources are able to get resources from the Government earlier and more quickly and therefore some of the houses that least need to be retrofitted are being retrofitted but so be it.

I will talk specifically about council housing. Louth County Council has been given a target of 145 houses this year. Louth County Council delivered 205 last year. It has constantly drawn down more money and shown capacity. There is a major problem with this because we are looking at a county that can do far more and we know the needs that are there.

I have spoken many times about both communal and district heating systems. We need to look at the support scheme for renewable heat, SSRH, provided by the SEAI becoming something that can lead to the necessary steps as regards district heating being provided from waste energy but also geothermal and other alternatives. I do not think that piece of work has been done and many experts have spoken about it lately.

See this speech in context