I welcome the opportunity to have this debate. As others have said, this is a technical Bill, one that has been in the pipeline, to excuse the pun, for quite a while. When I did research on this, I looked at the Oireachtas page where Bills are listed. I was aware I was familiar with the Bill but I could not remember seeing any previous debates. It is not listed on the website. There are no debates, but I know we had pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill in 2024. It is something the Department may be able to look at. I am not sure why-----

Sentiment score: 0.05

Even the pre-legislative scrutiny has not been mentioned. I read the pre-legislative scrutiny. The Bill is quite important. It is limited in scope but important in terms of what it does. When we carried out pre-legislative scrutiny on the Bill, the CRU and Jim Gannon came to discuss it with us. At the time, he made the point that about 100 LPG distribution networks were currently being operated by unlicensed parties. I understand about 1,000 residential properties were impacted by that. It is not a large number but from a safety aspect it is important that the Bill is passed. I found how long this Bill has taken interesting. It was first identified in 2016 and there was pre-legislative scrutiny in February 2024. The CRU has done a lot of work on this and managed to bring these premises and any risk potential under its umbrella, even though the Bill has not been in place. There was consultation in 2019, 2021 and 2022. This has been an incredibly long process. When we talk about safety, I am quite worried about the length of time it has taken to get here. As I said, the CRU has a list of inspections based on this to try to mitigate any risks. It is important that we move on the Bill and it should have been prioritised prior to this. The question is whether the CRU has capacity to deal with any additional responsibilities coming out of the Bill. It has requested additional resources. I understand in December last year, Jim Gannon told the infrastructure committee that the regulator was under capacity to serve the policy needs of the coming years and would need to double the number of staff. I do not know whether there has been any progress on that but the CRU will have additional responsibilities and new remits it will need to cover. The programme for Government has committed to prioritising a review and reform of the legislation underpinning the CRU. I would appreciate if there was an update on that. The reason I am raising capacity issues in respect of our energy regulator is because the question is whether the regulator has enough staff to do its job or whether the legislation is there to enable them to do the job. I raise this in the context of the ability of the regulator to focus on the important issues that impact people on a daily basis, including energy affordability. The Minister has spoken to the regulator and directed it to carry out an investigation into price gouging, which is really welcome. The regulator has had the powers to look at that. It is already in legislation. The affordability task force identified that as a key piece of work it should be doing. The question for me is why the regulator has not examined that. Why has it not examined the disparity between wholesale and retail prices? Irish consumers pay three times more at a retail point than the wholesale price. In winter, many people struggle with costs. I heard from a family member of a woman in a wheelchair who had to make a decision not to power her wheelchair because the family needed to use the money to heat the home. I am more than happy to speak to the Minister about that. This relates to emergency payments for people with disabilities. I was shocked by that story. The woman has sat in her wheelchair for a number of months and cannot get out of her house. There is a question about the CRU. It has a large remit. We need to know why it is not exercising its remit on those very important issues and whether that is a capacity issue. If it is, that is something that can be solved. If it feels it should not have been doing that work without direction, that is a problem. It has a responsibility to focus on individuals and customers and ensure that we avoid energy poverty. As I said, I read the discussion on pre-legislative scrutiny in the previous Dáil. It was a good resource to use to identify previous discussions on this issue. It provided an important opportunity for the previous climate committee to bring the regulator in to discuss the Bill and have discussions be transparent and publicly available. Sometimes the Government has not given the pre-legislative scrutiny piece enough value. I am concerned because I have received emails from environmental organisations which are worried about the potential of pre-legislative scrutiny being waived in respect of LNG legislation.

Sentiment score: 0.12

This related to the LNG facility. It is more about the importance of pre-legislative scrutiny, in particular when we are discussing energy. In that instance, I would be very concerned and would not agree with waiving any pre-legislative scrutiny for any aspect of LNG legislation. There is such concern about this publicly that the process needs to be transparent and there needs to be a debate in the Dáil. As legislators, we need to be given the opportunity to do our job in that regard. I wanted to mention that to the Minister. The Social Democrats will support the Bill. It is important and I ask that things are sped up. We have been waiting for this for quite a while. The Bill is important. It is also very important that the CRU has the resources necessary for it to do its job.

Sentiment score: 0.17