I welcome the opportunity to speak on this technical Bill. While my party and I recognise the importance of this Bill, there are still outstanding issues that Sinn Féin and others see with the legislation as it currently stands. It should be said that any Bill that intends to strengthen safety regulation for natural and liquified petroleum gas should be welcomed. It is imperative that we keep with international best practice in relation to safety processes and procedures when it comes to natural and liquified petroleum gas sites. It is clear there is a need for regulatory reform. As it stands, however, this Bill needs more attention. It is noteworthy that the Bill has been ten years in the making. It is disappointing that after all the time spent on the important reforms to the Electricity Regulation Act, industry representatives feel that engagement with them has been minimal. Concerns have been raised with the Minister on several occasions and have ultimately been ignored. Some of those concerns include the fact that there is no RPL board and no modification secretary, and that the registered gas installers are appointed as the inspection body when their inspectors are not even trained on non-domestic installation. The latest consultation has not been published. There is no transparency. There is a feeling that this whole Bill is being rushed through without the proper safeguards in place. Sinn Féin is, therefore, calling on the Government to address the issues that we and industry experts have been highlighting. We cannot have a situation where the Government drafts a Bill that is intended to increase safety regulation for natural and liquified petroleum gas but ends up creating loopholes for non-domestic installers. These are the kinds of unintended consequences that we may see as a result of this insufficient Bill. Another key issue concerns the Commission for Regulation of Utilities. The CRU has been under-resourced for many years in different areas. Specifically, on the question of natural and liquified petroleum gas, further expertise is required within the CRU to oversee this. That is critical for safety. However, it is also critical that natural and liquefied petroleum gas is more affordable. According to the 2022 census, over 600,000 Irish households use natural gas as their fuel for central heating, up from 550,000 in 2011 – I am one of those users. Yet, last summer, the Government increased the carbon tax again, placing a further burden on thousands of households already struggling with a cost-of-living crisis. Irish households are currently paying €360 a year more than our European counterparts. It is no wonder there are more than 300,000 people in energy arrears. By September 2025, electricity prices were over four times higher than in January 1996. It is scandalous. The people are being totally fleeced by profit-hungry energy companies. Meanwhile, they are faced with a Government that has no desire to stop it and a regulator that has been rendered powerless to do anything about it. While it is important that we are weaning people off fossil fuels, it beggars belief that the Government would increase carbon taxes when it is doing very little to switch us to renewable energy, and making that the acceptable and easy choice for households. Households are already on the brink. Over the Christmas period, I had many visitors to my constituency office who could not afford their ever-increasing energy bills. We have heard these stories repeatedly with people choosing between eating and heating and not knowing whether they can afford to throw another log onto the fire during the cold winter and wearing multiple layers. What kind of a society do we live in where we cannot even keep our people warm? I remember when I was growing up you would hear about old age pensioners getting on the bus to keep warm. Are we really going to be getting back to that? The elderly, children and people with disabilities have repeatedly called on the Government to implement an emergency winter payment to offset the effects of the austerity budget of last year. It is time for the Government and the regulator to tackle this issue head on. The Government should adopt the Sinn Féin proposals and enact our legislation to hold energy companies to account, to reinstate energy credits, to decouple the link between gas and electricity prices and to work towards Irish independence through the roll-out of renewables. This crisis is not inevitable. Solving it is a matter of will and political choice which this Government seems unwilling to make.

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