As others have said, people are fed up, exhausted and worn down by the current energy crisis. Some of those already challenged to make ends meet - those with disabilities, for example, or those on very low incomes - are now living hand to mouth and cutting back on food just to keep a bit of heat and light, and that is before the darker winter months crawl back in again. We have also found out that small businesses are hanging on. I have spoken to quite a few in my constituency. We see that prices always shoot up in an incident, but when wholesale prices drop or a Government initiative provides a belated relief, we do not see the same movement downwards. It is all about the hedging and the margins, but a lot of it is basically "Wizard of Oz" stuff and no one can see what is going on behind the curtain. That is why I welcome the Electricity Regulation (Amendment) Bill 2026. In the same theme as "The Wizard of Oz", it is not a magic wand to reduce prices but it might just lead to fairer pricing and help people make better decisions because of the suggestions like the monthly publication of the supplier margins, the oversight of the hedging, the quarterly reports showing how quickly the retail prices are tracking the wholesale costs and giving more and stronger powers to the CRU to investigate any kind of anti-competitive behaviour. To be clear, there are real reasons prices stay up. Ireland's wholesale prices are still higher in general. Network and grid charges are higher, and that is before we put the investment into upgrading the grid so we can actually be supplied wholly by homegrown energy and be a net exporter. That is a long way down the road but we should be starting now. Hedging, to an extent, does delay price reductions, and our dependence on oil and gas for electricity and for other forms of energy makes us very vulnerable. The Bill is restricted in what it can do. The CRU cannot override EU law. The Government might say EU law is already in place so we do not need this, but it cannot get better than EU law and it cannot set direct pricing either, and it does not tackle the root cause of our dependence on imported fossil fuels. To be clear, however, it is an improvement on what is there already. Every piece of relevant information can only push the system a little closer to fairness for people. Let us remember that we are paying among the highest, if not the highest, electricity prices in Europe, but we are probably the ones that get the lowest amount of information as to why. A little bit of transparency would not go amiss, and I cannot see why this Bill would be opposed by the Government. Even if there are measures that its advice says cannot be implemented, the Bill can be amended and made better. In that context, more transparency is a good idea.

Sentiment score: -0.00