I wish the Minister a happy new year. What a glamorous topic we have to kick off the new year here. We have lost our audience in the Gallery already. We might forgive our friends on the Sinn Féin benches for veering off topic slightly. This is a very technical Bill but we are talking about safety and this legislation deserves careful consideration and examination by all of us in the House. The changes contained in this Bill are important. The Labour Party is broadly supportive of them. The vital work of the Commission for Regulation of Utilities often goes under the radar - perhaps thankfully since its work is often invisible, stepping in before problems arise. However, we do not need to be reminded of the seriousness of what we are talking about here. The regulation of our gas, electricity and water networks keeps us all safe. We are sadly too familiar with the deadly consequences that can occur when something goes wrong. It is crucial that those who are doing the work of keeping citizens safe from those risks have the proper legislative backing they need. They need to be able to put the proper systems in place to effectively regulate and enforce safety measures. As the CRU has made clear, it is important to note that this legislation is not a reaction to any specific gas or LPG safety incident that has occurred. This is, therefore, the fruit of good pre-emptive work, identifying potential problems before they arise and stepping in to take the action needed. However, while this Bill comes to us as the result of years of good work by the CRU and others, that in itself poses a question as to why it took so long to get here. The genesis of this legislation goes back to 2016 when the CRU was alerted to the existence of approximately 70 unlicensed LPG networks serving domestic customers. That is a decade ago. This was an issue that posed real safety risks to the public. As the CRU said, there were significant safety concerns for a number of these sites. The work of the CRU mitigated those risks in the immediate term, with interventions carried out on 16% of the sites to make them safe. In other cases, a gas safety officer issued instructions to the network operators with required actions to ensure the networks conformed with the relevant safety standards within a timescale. The fact remains that the existence of unregulated gas networks in Ireland poses a real safety risk, and that is why we are debating this legislation at all. The Government itself acknowledged this, telling us that given the imperative of public safety, this Bill is being treated as priority. Of course, the development and drafting of any legislation is complex and time-consuming. That is particularly true of a technical Bill like this one. The CRU consulted on the new regulatory regime to come into force and the Government engaged with external expertise on how to proceed. There was a pandemic and two general elections in the meantime. Even with all that in mind, what does it say about how we do legislation in this place that an important technical but nonetheless relatively narrow change to the law takes the best part of a decade to achieve? Where public safety is concerned, it is just not good enough that necessary changes like this take this long. This issue was raised at pre-legislative scrutiny when the committee's report "expressed concern regarding the relatively long period of time it has taken to propose this legislation, given that the issue it seeks to remedy was first identified in 2016". I would welcome the Minister's view on this, and would like to hear the Government's view on how we can ensure that crucial legislation dealing with public safety cannot be held up by delays. There are, of course, other elements of this Bill that are not directly concerned with the issue of non-regulated LPG networks. It introduces a penal offence for natural gas and LPG undertakings for failure to conform with a safety case, puts in place a requirement for gas undertakings to hold a safety permit and safety case for any given activity they carry out and puts the gas safety framework on a statutory basis. Importantly, the Bill strengthens the powers of the CRU in a number of areas, including on the appointment of gas safety officers and gas emergency officers and on the designation of natural gas and LPG activities under the new statutory regulatory regime. It seems certain that taken in the round, this Bill will place an additional administrative burden on the work of the CRU. The CRU, of course, has consulted and taken a key role in the drafting of this legislation but we need to be sure that the additional responsibilities being given to the organisation will be achievable and will not be to the detriment of other vital work that the CRU is carrying out. Can the Minister assure us that the CRU will be on equipped or resourced to carry out these additional responsibilities? Will the CRU resourcing to fulfill its duties? The CRU is funded through an industry levy on regulated entities under the Electricity Regulation Act 1999. I understand that the intention of the CRU, following consultation, is that the new small LPG reworks brought into the scope of licensing by this Bill will not be subject to that levy but will pay a €200 application fee. Is the Minister confident that any additional staffing or resourcing requirement borne by the CRU as a result of the measures in this Bill will be able to be covered by that funding arrangement? With any expansion of powers, we should always be certain that the requisite safeguards and checks and balances are in place. Robust and enforceable powers in the area of gas safety are necessary and important. There are significant expansions of power here that merit examination. For example, section 6 clarifies how and when a gas safety officer has the power to enter onto private land or premises, the way in which they can carry out their role, and their powers to preserve the scene of an incident for investigation. During pre-legislative scrutiny, the Department told the committee that "these provisions seek to strike a balance between the additional powers granted to GSOs and constitutional rights." The section provides that for a GSO to enter and inspect land, the GSO must be of the opinion that there "is or may be an imminent risk of bodily injury, threat to life or damage to property." It is reasonable and necessary that GSOs have these powers - being able to inspect before potential emergencies develop is crucial - but it will be important that clear policies and procedures, alongside safeguards and a dispute resolution process, are put in place with regard to their operation. Another area where powers will be strengthened through the Bill is in the removal of the 21-day waiting period before the CRU can issue an improvement notice to a gas undertaking. That period had allowed an undertaking to make representations to the CRU and engage with it before an improvement notice was issued. The argument, as I understand it, from the Government and the CRU is that this waiting period is inefficient and incompatible with safety when combined with the High Court appeals process. Will this change, however, mean that a High Court appeal is the only option available to an undertaking which feels it has been incorrectly served an improvement notice? Given the state of play in our courts system, we should try to ensure that other options for engagement and mediation are open in all our systems. Is the Minister satisfied that removing the 21-day representation period, rather than reducing or otherwise qualifying it, is the best path forward? I also have a broader question. What kind of role does the Government see for LPG networks in Ireland in the future? By legislating for a new class of LPG licence for smaller networks, is the Government taking a step towards encouraging the development of such networks? I would like some clarity from Government on its intentions. We have seen from previous experience that an expansion of smaller LPG networks could pose issues with ensuring effective regulation and safety. How it would intersect with our climate targets at a time when we want to wean ourselves off our reliance on fossil fuels is another question to be considered. My understanding is that the majority of the unregulated networks discovered by the CRU in its investigations from 2016 were in small or medium apartment blocks or housing estates. Housing developers may remain keen to put in place LPG networks if given the chance. Given the well-documented shortage of serviced land that we face, and how that hurts our chances of meeting housing delivery targets, does the Government see a role for local LPG networks in the future of housing delivery? I certainly hope not, given our continued failure to get anywhere near our climate targets, but it would be useful to understand that medium-term intention when considering this Bill. Has the Government considered any lessons for its impending private wires policy? It has made clear its intention to allow private wires to be built and operated in certain circumstances. We have heard of the safety risks that emerged over several years when private LPG networks were allowed to develop in an unregulated, unmonitored fashion. There are, of course, important differences between these two situations but the fundamentals are the same: local private energy networks. If the Government is to move forward with its private wires initiative, it would be worthwhile to look closely at this case and to ensure that full and effective regulation and safety measures are in place from the off. Has the Department shared learnings across these two processes? This legislation is an important strengthening of the regulatory landscape for natural gas and LPG. Proper regulation of utilities, particularly gas, keeps us all safe. It is vital that the CRU has the powers it needs to do that work. While I question why it took so long to bring this legislation forward and will push the Government to ensure the necessary checks and safeguards are in place on new powers, we in the Labour Party will support this Bill.

Sentiment score: 0.36