Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan has accused Sinn Féin of following a Tory government approach in dealing with the energy crisis which he claimed would benefit the better off and the energy industry.
He clashed in the Dáil with Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty, who replied that “you’ve Tories on the brain, maybe that’s because you’re in bed with the Irish Tories here”.
Mr Ryan also rejected a call by Social Democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy to expand the powers of the energy regulator to prevent firms “gouging” consumers with increased standing charges, something he could do immediately to benefit householders.
Ms Murphy said standing charges were going from €300 to €700 and that vulnerable people with pre-paid meters were paying up to €900. “That’s gouging,” she said, adding that standing charges “have nothing to do with the unit cost of electricity”.
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But the Minister said it was not something that could be dealt with “with the stroke of a regulatory pen”.
Raising the energy crisis in the Dáil, Mr Doherty accused the Government of being asleep as he called for a freeze on energy prices with the cap backdated to last summer.
During leaders’ questions, which saw Mr Ryan stand in for the Taoiseach and Mr Doherty for his party leader Mary Lou McDonald, the Donegal TD said a growing number of European countries were adopting price certainty for their populations.
Second worst in EU
Accusing the Government of being the second worst in the EU to provide supports to businesses and consumers, he pointed to the weekend protests in Cork by 5,000 people demanding action after being hit by surging energy charges.
Mr Ryan insisted that a windfall tax was the route forward, saying: “I don’t believe the Sinn Féin plan is the right one to set out. It is very similar to what the Tory party are looking to do”, as he cited remarks on Wednesday morning by the UK’s business secretary Jacob Rees Mogg.
He said the policy Mr Doherty was setting out “would actually benefit the better off who tend to use more energy, tend to own the bigger houses, tend to have the bigger bills that they would benefit most from the approach that you’re suggesting”.
“Secondly, I think the Tory party approach would benefit the energy industries,” he added. “And that is something that we don’t need to do this time. What we need to do is to apply windfall surcharges and actually give that money back to our people.”
Mr Doherty said people living in Northern Ireland would have certainty in terms of their energy costs, but outside of Britain, “Austria and France and Croatia and Poland and Romania, and in the last 48 hours, the Netherlands, Denmark have announced” energy certainty plans.
He added that Slovakia also announced “that they’re going to bring in price certainty for customers. Why? Because this is part of the European toolbox”. Price certainty is one of the measures that these countries had introduced “yet your government is asleep”, Mr Doherty added.
The UK government yesterday [WEDNEDDAY] announced an energy price cap from November for homes in Northern Ireland.
The announcement follows the launch of the Energy Price Guarantee in the rest of the UK, under which a typical household would pay an average of £2,500 (€2,857) a year on their energy bill for the next two years from October 1st. The scheme limits the price suppliers can charge customers for units of gas and electricity.
