One in seven households is in arrears on its electricity bills. Many have been in that position for months and cannot see any way out of it. Today, 1 July, bills are going up again. Electric Ireland, the State's largest energy provider, is putting up its prices, which means average households will pay an extra €138 on their bills. Some 1.1 million customers will be impacted. Everyone knows we have the highest electricity prices in Europe. We pay 40% more than the EU average and that amounts to around €480 per year for an average household. It is an incredibly large amount of money and we can see why people find it so difficult to make do. All the while, there are wind turbines all over the country being switched off at night or when there are constraints on the grid because the grid cannot take the electricity they would produce. This costs approximately €500 million per year and much of that is being paid by the very people who struggle to pay their bills. It is going onto individual homeowners' bills. It is a crazy situation. I will tomorrow bring a Bill before the Dáil that will prevent that electricity wastage from happening. It would force the Minister to do something with that energy. It needs to be provided to households at low cost or to people at risk of energy poverty for free. It is being wasted otherwise and we are still paying for it. The UK is doing something in this regard and I ask that the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, look into it. It is really important that we address this issue and stop the wastage of renewable electricity. We have heard a lot of discussion this morning about the high cost of petrol and diesel. Those prices are skyrocketing because of what is happening in Iran and what happened prior to that in Ukraine. We need to move people away from fossil fuel cars and towards electric vehicles. Many people are making that change. In 2025, there were record sales of electric cars in Ireland and the figures to date in 2026 seem to exceed that. That is a good news story. We are moving people towards a more sustainable and affordable means of transport. However, at the same time that the Government is encouraging people to move to electric vehicles, EVs, and has a target of 1 million EVs by 2030, the prices people pay for a fast-charging or public-charging system are skyrocketing to the point where it is more expensive than running a car on petrol or diesel. It makes no sense. Those public chargers are essentially unregulated. Ionity charges 85 cent per kilowatt hour for fast charging and the ESB has put up its prices to 72 cent. Many people are being locked out of electric car ownership because they live in apartments, do not have on-street parking or are renting. We have a two-tier system whereby many people are unable to avail of the benefits of electric vehicles. It makes no sense. I ask that the Government begin regulating these fast chargers. We cannot have a situation where they charge whatever they want and there is no indexing to domestic or business rates. It is an incredible system and disadvantages the people we need to get into electric vehicles. Will the Minister of State do that and ensure that there is no price-gouging at EV charging points? It seems to me that there is considerable price-gouging going on now because they know they can get away with it.

Sentiment score: -0.05