Workers and families across this State are really struggling with the weight of the highest electricity prices in Europe. We have normalised these and it is not good enough. We all spoke earlier about nurses on International Nurses Day, and they are struggling too. This energy crisis is impacting everyone across the country. Parents and carers are cutting back on essentials, workers are rationing heating and households are falling deeper into poverty, simply trying to keep the lights on and keep heat in the house. Yet, at the same time, energy companies are making eye-watering profits off the back of this crisis. The latest Eurostat figures confirm that Irish households are paying electricity prices 40% above the EU average, and people are asking why. This means that Irish families are paying, on average, €480 more per household compared with households in Europe, for a basic necessity. The Government's response has been to shrug its shoulders and pretend that nothing can be done. This is head-in-the-sand syndrome. Ireland's energy rip-off is the result of political choices made by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to protect corporate profits instead of working people and families. Tonight, Sinn Féin is saying that enough is enough. Immediate supports like electricity credits are urgently needed to support struggling households but we recognise that temporary measures alone will not solve this crisis. Unless our energy market is fundamentally reformed and our reliance on international fossil fuel markets significantly reduced, households will continue to suffer from one global conflict to the next. I thank my colleagues for bringing forward this legislation to give the energy regulator real powers to hold companies to account, to tackle price-gouging, to improve transparency and to prioritise affordability. If energy companies are not profiteering, they should have no problem proving it. Workers and their families are carrying an unfair burden while massive corporate energy users receive sweetheart deals. Households are paying double the generation costs and ten times the network costs of that of data centres. How can that be justified? I have said before in this House that deciding not to end energy rip-off is a political choice. Government could choose to impose a windfall tax on the eye-watering profits of energy companies. It could choose to introduce household energy credits but it has not. Sinn Féin has always chosen to stand with workers and families and wants to end the rip-off once and for all. The same cannot be said for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Something has to be done. We cannot continue pretending that Ireland having the highest energy costs in the EU is normal. It is not normal, and it is not fair. In fact, it is grossly unfair.

Sentiment score: -0.08