I echo the comments about PLS. Unfortunately, during the previous term the Minister for energy got into a really bad habit of rushing Bills through the committee without proper scrutiny and it looks like the Minister of State is taking up that mantle and doing similarly. As a principle, all Bills should go through PLS unless there is an urgent or emergency reason not to. I do not think that is the case in this instance and it certainly was not the case previously. I ask the Government to stop using that mechanism. The Government members within the committee will always have the majority vote so I ask the Government to please allow Bills to go through the proper process. It will mean a much more robust debate and better legislation at the end of the day. It is not wasted time but very much valuable time. I ask the Government to do that. I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. It is not just a technical debate about infrastructure. It is a discussion about the changing economic climate in Ireland, the changing environmental framework we are dealing with and how we prepare for those different changes as we go into the next decade. It is also a question of fairness and who we are building out our energy systems for. That needs to be a large part of the discussion here today. It is nearly a year now since January 2025 when Storm Éowyn tore through Ireland, leaving 768,000 homes, farms and businesses without power. It was the worst storm that ESB Networks and the country have ever faced. Poles snapped, lines were down and entire communities were cut off from heat, light and communication for weeks on end. In the aftermath, emergency centres were set up, international crews were flown in and thousands of families were left in the cold. However, it was not a freak event. The unfortunate reality is that we-----

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We will potentially see more of those storms. That is the reality we face because of climate change. We will see more frequent and more severe storms. We cannot look at what happened during Storm Éowyn and consider it as a very difficult period in time. It is something that we need to learn an awful lot of lessons from and we need to see it as a wake-up call. The reality is that our grid is not resilient enough and our infrastructure is not ready. Indeed, our emergency services were stretched to their limits in their response. I welcome the Bill because I believe it can play a part in getting us onto a proper footing to deal with similar instances. I hope we do not have to deal with too many but we need to be ready and prepared to deal with them if they do happen. I welcome the Bill and the €1.5 billion equity investment for ESB Networks. I also welcome the fact the increase to the ESB's borrowing limit will unlock over 500 capital projects, including 181 km of new overhead lines, 319 km of underground cables, 70 new and upgraded substations and 50,000 pole replacements. Reading out those figures, you realise that the scale of the job ahead of ESB Networks and the teams, the workers on the ground to whom the Minister of State referred, is enormous. It is important that we invest in the ESB to help us achieve that modern and resilient electricity system. We saw an awful lot of gaps in the legislation and the different frameworks when we saw what Storm Éowyn did, particularly to forestry corridors. It is important that we manage the vegetation around the grid to stop these kinds of outages. This is all positive. This is a positive step from the Government. However, there are certain aspects that we need to consider. One is that while we are putting in this investment, we must consider the costs and how people are going to pay for that grid infrastructure. Care needs to be taken to ensure we are not disproportionately impacting people who cannot afford any higher costs on their bills. It is important that we also ensure there is prioritisation of those resources, particularly for residents, people who are vulnerable and, indeed, small businesses. What we are seeing at the moment is, unfortunately, investment in a grid that will ultimately benefit large corporations through the supporting of the whole data centre industry. I will come to that shortly. We need to make sure that if the lights go out, we can assist the people who are most vulnerable and most at risk. We must ensure that if the lights go out, we can make those homes resilient and not focus our efforts on those corporations. The Minister of State talked about PR6. As I have raised at the committee, PR6 will only invest in the grid to support the current level of data centre applications. It is not for any future data centres. According to the affordability task force, we will see an increase of 45% in electricity demand over the next decade. There is a real worry that even with this level of investment and the investment being given under PR6, if we continue to allow increases in the electricity used by data centres and this proliferation of data centres, the grid will still not be sufficient. It is only going to shore up the grid and secure the issues for the current level of data centres and not any future ones. That is a risk and I ask the Government to look at it. When I became a TD six years ago, one of the first motions I brought forward was on data centres and seeking a moratorium on them. It was not that the Social Democrats were against data centres per se - there was not a blanket objection in principle to data centres - but we wanted to see strategic management of data centres because it was clear, even back then, that this was not happening. We were seeing projections that were forecasting that by 2030, 30% of our electricity demand would be coming from the data centre industry. When we look at what actually happens in Europe, where the relevant figure is 2% to 3%, we see that Ireland is being disproportionately impacted by the demand from data centres on our electricity grid. Over the past few years, we had instances where there were risks of brownouts and blackouts because the grid was not sufficient and was not able to deal with the demand, primarily from data centres. What did we have to do? The Government had to rush out and purchase generators that cost hundreds of millions of euro to ensure the data centres had access to a grid. It is really important that when decisions are being made about data centres, we know how many we can afford in this country from a climate perspective, from an energy security perspective and from an energy pricing perspective. The more pressure and the more demand that is put on a commodity such as electricity, the higher the price goes. Over the past few years, we have seen so many prices skyrocketing. Ordinary individuals are unable to keep on top of that. I believe a large part of that is down to the demand that is being placed on the trading and use of electricity. I ask the Minister of State to look into that and not ignore it. We are not saying there should be absolutely no data centres; we are saying there is a need to put in good data centres that are efficient, can work in a complex electrical environment, can actually act as storage and can perform a function as part of that whole system. Do not just roll out planning permissions or approvals for them or roll out the grid because it is very costly to do that. I also want to make the point that when the Government invests in the grid, it puts additional costs on consumers. There is an economic reality there. I was interested to see in the report by the affordability task force that it stated that, essentially, the network charges from the CRU's recent decision will put an increase of approximately €29 per year onto a typical customer bill. I want to raise this issue with the Minister of State because I am quite concerned about it. I raised it with the CRU over a month ago. It must be six weeks since I raised it with the CRU at a committee meeting, but it appears that nothing has been done. The Government needs to ensure that when it is making investments in the grid and when additional charges go onto consumer bills, there is transparency about these charges and the energy companies do not use the Government's investment in the grid to hike up prices, because that is exactly what we have seen. In September 2025, Energia announced an increase in its energy prices. I think it was going to add an extra €200 or so onto people's bills. Energia stated that these price changes are "now unavoidable" due to "ongoing, substantial increases in electricity, system operator and network charges" and "that these costs are required to recover the costs of ensuring security of supply, addressing network constraints and investing in the electricity grid." That is incorrect. That is misinformation that is being put out to hundreds of thousands of Energia customers. I raised this with the CRU representatives at a meeting of the energy committee six weeks ago and asked them to look into it, but that press release is still on the Energia website. It has not been amended at all to reflect the reality that the €200 it is putting the bills up by every year is not down to grid improvements, security of supply issues or network charges. Energia is putting the price up because it is gouging. It will blame the Government, and investment in the grid, for doing this. I ask the Minister of State to raise this matter. I have serious concerns that the CRU has not addressed that issue after six weeks. It is the CRU's job to protect customers and to ensure there is transparency in the information provided to it, but it is not doing its job properly. Another area I want to raise in regard to the CRU is arrears. A report from the affordability task force yesterday mentioned that in June, 13% of electricity customers and 27% of gas customers were in arrears. It is crazy that the CRU has not published the most recent data and that we are still working from the June figures. When CRU representatives came to the committee meeting six weeks ago, I asked them what the latest figures for arrears were, but they could not tell me. They said they would publish them shortly and still have not done so. That information should have been available in the context of last month's budget. When the Minister of State is making policy decisions, he needs to know how many people are in arrears and how many the numbers are going up by each month. The Minister of State needs to have that information to hand because otherwise he will not be able to identify the scale of the problem. Again, the CRU is responsible for this. I have sent two or three emails to the CRU during the past six weeks asking for that information but it is not being provided. Obviously, the CRU is not listening to me. I ask the Minister of State to raise this issue with it because it is the body that is meant to be protecting customers. There is a lot here. We will have an opportunity to discuss this important legislation over the coming days. There needs to be a short-term focus on how we can protect people this winter if there are more storms, how we can get ready and how households will be resilient not just to price increases but also to any disturbances because of storms coming in. It is really important but we will have further opportunities to debate that. I ask the Minister of State to talk specifically to the CRU about the points I have raised because I think they are important.

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