I thank Sinn Féin for introducing this Bill. The Social Democrats will be supporting it. Transparency in our energy pricing sector is long overdue. This Bill ensures that. It also strengthens the mandate of the CRU to actively intervene in the energy market in the name of the public interest. It places energy affordability at the heart of energy regulation. This is all very welcome. For too long, Irish households have been asked to accept price increases and to trust that those increases are justified and fair without concrete evidence that this is true. This debate goes to the heart of that problem. It is about transparency and restoring public trust in our energy sector by enhancing the CRU's reporting obligations and requiring regular published data on retail prices, supplier margins and price changes. That is an important and necessary change. Last month, I raised the CRU's price gouging investigation with the Minister of State, Deputy Dooley. I asked him for an update on the CRU price gouging investigation that the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, had called for at the end of 2025. Yesterday, the CRU finally published its interim review. When I spoke to the Minister of State in mid-April, he had no update on what the CRU had actually done or where the CRU was at with its investigation. I find it surprising that the Minister of State did not know that the publication was just weeks away. There is a clear disconnect between the Government and the regulator. This is a concerning thing. The CRU's interim review concludes that it has found no evidence of excess profitability or price gouging by suppliers. For me, that raises more questions than it answers. The CRU will appear before the climate committee tomorrow to go through the review. This is only an interim review and it is not the full investigation. The CRU states that more detailed analysis is to come. In this interim review, the CRU does not dispute that wholesale prices have fallen dramatically since 2022, that the International Energy Agency, IEA, states that those reductions were not passed on to households and that the Eurostat data states that Ireland has the highest household electricity prices in the EU. This is all still true. Yet, according to the CRU, there is nothing to see here. The market is functioning as it should. There is nothing to worry about. I just do not understand how that makes any sense. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, said earlier on that he believed there needed to be a strengthening of the mandate of the CRU. I would question exactly why he believes that the mandate should be strengthened. If the mandate of the CRU needs to be strengthened, that would imply that any investigations into things like price gouging are potentially not up to scratch or the CRU does not have enough teeth or remit to deal with them. I would be interested to hear from the Minister on exactly what additional powers he would like the CRU to have. People all over this country are being crushed by incredibly high electricity prices that are just going up and up. Over 317,000 households are now in arrears. These are people who work hard, who do all the right things, who get up every morning and go to work, but they simply cannot keep their heads above water. All the while, wholesale electricity prices are 72% lower than they were at their peak in August 2022, yet retail prices continue to rise. If that is a well-functioning market, it is a market that is failing consumers. For many people across the country, this energy crisis is getting worse by the day. Hundreds of thousands of people are in arrears on their electricity bills. Families are being forced to make impossible choices every day between paying their bills and covering basic daily essentials. The cost-of-living increases from 2025 alone have led to an average Irish home paying €480 more per year than households in neighbouring countries. When the Government is challenged on that point, it points to the national energy affordability task force that was established last year. It keeps on saying that solutions will come later in the year, but people are struggling now. They need help now and they have needed help for months. That answer is completely unacceptable. This task force, even with the fact that it will only be reporting fully at the end of the year, has only met on three occasions between its establishment in June 2025 and February 2026. Three meetings while electricity prices climbed and climbed and more families fell into debt. That response is not reflective of the scale of this crisis. It appears to me that the Government is not taking this seriously at all. Irish households have been struggling with skyrocketing energy costs for years. It did not begin in February with the USA and Israeli war on Iran. It has been going on for years. Last week, we learned in the Irish Independent that Irish households were now €2,000 a year worse off due to rising energy, grocery and health insurance costs combined. Energy is not an isolated expense, but part of the wider cost-of-living crisis that is squeezing people to breaking point. When the Minister of State and this Government tell people to wait, that relief is coming and that assistance is on the way, he can understand why people do not believe them and why their trust in this Government is eroding. EU state aid rules have been relaxed in the context of the current energy and oil crisis. Targeted price interventions have been permitted by the Commission. The Government has options, options that make this inaction inexcusable. In the face of this cost-of-living crisis, the Social Democrats have proposed a targeted €400 energy credit for households with low-to-middle incomes. That is a practical and deliverable measure. It would offer direct relief to those most under pressure. However, short-term financial support is simply not enough. We also need structural change. We need to accelerate our transition to green energy and start future-proofing homes against future price shocks. The Social Democrats have a plan for that as well. Our solar for all proposal is a five-point plan that would expand and improve access to solar nationwide. It includes doubling the existing solar grant, reinstating the grant for battery storage, including free solar panels as part of the warmer homes scheme and increasing grants for businesses to install solar. Crucially, our plan also addresses the need to roll out new technology like plug-in solar. These are practical proposals that would cut bills, reduce emissions and insulate households from future shocks. Energy security is about more than just affordability. Energy security is national resilience. Transparency needs to lie at the heart of everything we do. Without it, public trust will be lost, if it is not already. Irish people are being asked to pay the highest electricity prices in Europe while being told everything is working as it should, that prices are fair and everything is fine. This simply does not add up.

Sentiment score: 0.07