I thank the Minister of State for being here. My purpose today is to raise the issue of the very real and deeply disturbing impact of drug-related intimidation and violence on families right across Ireland. I spoke on the matter in this House recently and, since then, I have been contacted by a number of people. Many people wrongly see drug-related intimidation as something that only affects those involved in drugs or who use drugs. However, I have found that is simply not true. It is increasingly the case that intimidation reaches into other areas and families and the lives of ordinary law-abiding citizens and neighbours, people who have never had anything to do with drugs and who never chose to be dragged into this chaos.

I recently heard of a maintenance groundsman for a school who had found a parcel. He did not know what it was and presented it to the authorities. They said he should go to the police. He presented it to the police and it turned out to be cocaine. Unfortunately, the people who owned the drugs identified him as the man who shopped them and they came looking for the full value, which was over €100,000. This drug-related intimidation is affecting people who have never used drugs and who have never been part of that world. It arose here in its most frightening form. As can be imagined, this man was not a drug user. He is now living in fear of reprisals and his family home being damaged. It has made him a target.

That is an example of the reality for many families throughout Ireland. Drug-related intimidation does not just affect drug users; it affects families. It involves psychological coercion. The Minister of State will recently have heard in the news about homes being burnt and so on. When violence does not materialise, people constantly fear what might happen to their children, their house or their family. It creates ongoing trauma. Children absorb the fear and parents live with guilt and shame. Many families I know from my own business and charity work have paid out tens of thousands of euro to these criminals.

I acknowledge the drug-related intimidation and violence engagement, DRIVE, project put in place by the Minister for Health. I launched that in my own area two years ago. It recognises that the problem requires co-ordinated action across the areas of justice, health and community policing. That framework is certainly a good one but I find that frameworks alone do not protect families and individuals. On the ground, families are experiencing intimidation and many are terrified to report this to the Garda. When the Garda does deal with it, it collects all the information but prosecutions often do not come before the courts. The families need trauma-informed support. They need to work with the task forces and so on. It all needs to be joined up. There needs to be joined-up thinking. There is a huge gap in this area. I have asked the Minister for Health to address this but there is also a part for the Department of justice to play. Those involved in intimidation, extortion and threats have to be brought before the courts.

I will speak about the community safety partnerships, CSPs. These have real potential when they are funded and when they are supported by the local drug and alcohol task forces. How will the community safety partnerships be resourced? How will they be required to work with the drug and alcohol task forces?

How will the DRIVE framework be matched with dedicated funding, clearly defined roles and practical family supports so that this can be consistent throughout the country? Crucially, we need to ensure that when people do the right thing, such as the example that I gave, they do not become targets for these criminals. Families living in fear deserve far more than co-ordination on paper. I think DRIVE is wonderful co-ordination on paper but we absolutely need to resource it and make sure that prosecutions appear before the courts.

I wish everyone in the Seanad a good Christmas and a peaceful and successful new year. I see we have cross-party Members here today. I wish them all well. I thank Senator McCarthy for raising this issue. I am taking this matter on behalf of the Minister of State with responsibility for public health, well-being and the national drugs strategy, Deputy Jennifer Murnane O’Connor. I welcome the opportunity to update the House on funding for the DRIVE project and the support provided by the Minister of State with responsibility for the national drugs strategy and the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration.

Drug-related intimidation and violence arises where individuals or family members are threatened by criminal drug gangs, usually because of an outstanding debt arising from the supply of illicit drugs. Drug-related intimidation is a serious and insidious issue impacting individuals, families and communities nationwide. It is a complex problem that leaves victims fearful and powerless. Senator McCarthy has alluded to all this. Intimidation can involve demands for repayment of perceived drug debts or opportunistic extortion, and its relentless nature poses significant risks to health and well-being. It can also be a means of recruiting people into supporting the criminal activities of drug gangs. The DRIVE project is an interagency response to drug-related intimidation and violence affecting an individual, a family or a community. It is supported by the Department of Health, the Department of justice, An Garda Síochána, the HSE drug task forces and other stakeholders. It aims to build community capacity to support victims and tackle the root causes of intimidation and violence.

The Department of Health has been the principal funder of DRIVE from 2020, when the drug task forces first submitted a proposal to establish DRIVE. The Department currently provides over €250,000 per annum to meet the operational costs of DRIVE, amounting to €1,260,000 in total to date. In May this year, the Minister of State, Deputy Murnane O’Connor, and the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, jointly launched a nationwide awareness campaign on drug-related intimidation and the supports available through DRIVE. A specific aim of the campaign was to reduce the stigma associated with drug-related intimidation. The Department of Health provided additional funding to support the national awareness campaign. The campaign has been successful in increasing awareness of supports available to 29% of the population, which represents a 10% increase overall.

A key objective of DRIVE is to build community capacity to support victims of drug-related intimidation and violence. It provides specific training and capacity-building, which is being rolled out on a national basis. The DRIVE project is developing resources and signposting affected individuals to specialist support services in their local areas, including An Garda Síochána’s drug-related intimidation reporting programme. The programme responds to the needs of drug users, family members and individuals who are experiencing drug-related intimidation. It is led by specially trained Garda inspectors who have expertise in understanding and supporting people who experience drug-related intimidation.

The DRIVE oversight committee is responsible for leading and co-ordinating the implementation of the DRIVE framework in partnership with key stakeholders. It is supported by a DRIVE project staff team which includes a national DRIVE co-ordinator, a DRIVE project officer and a DRIVE data research and evaluation co-ordinator. The Minister of State with responsibility for the national drugs strategy has also assisted the DRIVE project to develop a national reporting system on incidences of drug-related intimidation, using the national drug treatment reporting system, which is maintained by the Health Research Board. This national surveillance system will record incidents of drug-related intimidation and provide national data on the nature and extent of this criminal behaviour. In turn, this will allow us to quantify the demand for support and to allocate additional resources where these are required. I would encourage people experiencing drug-related intimidation to contact their local drug task force or community-based service provider to get confidential support.

Senator McCarthy specifically referred to the community safety partnerships. He will appreciate that they are under the Department of justice but it is something I have no doubt will be noted by both the Department of Health and the Department of justice. I suggest that the Senator take this matter up directly with the Department of justice too. I will await his further comments.

When I tabled the Commencement matter, I asked for the Department of justice because I felt this is more a justice issue, in order to get prosecutions before the courts.

I suppose it is interagency.

It is joint. It is definitely interagency. I notice the Minister of State’s statement says it usually affects drug users or their family members. The example I gave was one of people who have nothing to do with drugs. They are pulled into a world by thugs and criminals, which is totally unfair. The problem is that they feel that when they stand up to these people, their whole lives go into chaos. The test of the DRIVE initiative is when you bring together the Department of justice and the Department of Health and make this thing work. We have the framework and the possibility of making a difference here. However, families are still suffering. I am asking the Minister of State to make sure that DRIVE is matched with funding. I launched it two years ago with fanfare and I was so excited about it, but I do not think the funding and prosecution rate are working on the ground. The potential is there but we need to resource it.

I stated previously that I want to thank Senator McCarthy for bringing this matter forward. I am taking this matter on behalf of the Minister of State with responsibility for public health, well-being and the national drugs strategy, Deputy Jennifer Murnane O’Connor. DRIVE embodies the holistic, health-led approach to drug use, based on interagency collaboration. By working collaboratively, DRIVE can make a practical difference to people and families affected by drug-related intimidation and drugs in communities. The Minister of State with responsibility for the national drugs strategy will shortly receive a draft of the successor national drugs strategy. It is expected that strengthening responses to drug-related intimidation, such as DRIVE, will be an important component of the strategy. The Minister will continue to work with the DRIVE oversight committee to support the national roll-out of the DRIVE project. I acknowledge the leadership role played by the drugs task force in developing the DRIVE project. There are two aspects. I will bring the ask for additional funding back to the Minister of State, Deputy Murnane O'Connor, and officials. I also suggest, in the context of community safety partnerships, that the Senator take the matter up directly with the Department of justice. It is a collaborative, interagency approach, and it is hugely important and affects too many people in their daily lives.

Every week, I am contacted by people either coming to see me or through emails and phone calls who are worried about their child because they have identified an additional need but no services are available for that child in the foreseeable future. I will give an example of one set of parents who contacted me last week about their son James, who is five years old and has just started school. He was referred for occupational therapy, OT, at a four-year check-up by his public health nurse because both the public health nurse and indeed the parents had concerns about his fine motor skills and gross motor skills, but he was refused access to OT and told that because he was already on the physiotherapy list, since, as a baby, he received physiotherapy for a totally unrelated issue, he had to go back to physiotherapy. The physiotherapy team said it would take him in and assess him, which it did, and it referred him to occupational therapy.

It was vital that the issues with his fine motor skills be addressed, as he was about to start school. In the meantime, he has started school and it has identified the issues too. While people at the school are very supportive, they are not therapists and do not have the knowledge or expertise to assist him to the extent that he needs. While doing the speech programme in school, he was identified as having a significant speech delay too.

He had been referred to speech and language therapy by the age of two because he had not spoken at that stage. He waited two years for speech and language therapy and by the time he was accepted onto the list, he had started talking and they said he was fine and left him. Had they addressed the issues then, he would not have speech delay at this stage. Now, he is being referred back to speech and language therapy. The parents are most concerned about the need for occupational therapy. The occupational therapist came back to them and said she would accept him onto her list but it would be up to three years before he was seen. They actually cannot say that that is definite because it is dependent on resources, that is, staff. He will potentially be eight before he is seen by an occupational therapist. He will have missed out on so much in that time. The parents could pay privately but they cannot afford to. Even if they could, it is very difficult to access a therapist. Many people I know are getting into debt having to pay out the money for therapists that they should be receiving from the State.

Another little girl, Méabh, is almost three years old. She is deaf in one ear. She urgently requires speech and language therapy. She is on a waiting list for over a year. She was referred for speech and language therapy in September 2024. When I contacted primary care, I was told it would be early 2027. We are talking about two and half years in total that she will be waiting. Again, Méabh's parents cannot afford to pay privately but they say she requires the early intervention to prevent her from experiencing developmental delays. I looked at the lists in Cavan-Monaghan for the end of last year and there were 810 waiting for a first-time assessment with occupational therapy, and more than 500 of them had been on that list for over a year. Speech and language therapy was the longest list. There were 1,604 awaiting an initial assessment for speech and language in Cavan-Monaghan. That is not including initial therapy or those waiting for further therapy. The HSE has compiled extensive data on this. It knows there are extensive delays.

I know this relates to a different Department but the children's disability network teams, CDNTs, also have a huge waiting list for both assessment of need and for services and therapies. The staffing in Cavan CDNT was a huge issue of concern. It has improved and there are only a small number of vacancies, but there is a huge waiting list. Even with a full team complement, which it now has, I do not know how it is going to address all of those who have been on the waiting list since the time it did not. I am not even sure the team is actually big enough when it is fully filled to address the need that is there.

I extend my gratitude to the Senator for raising these pertinent issues and, in particular, bringing light to the cases of James, Méabh and their families. As the Senator will know, the relevant Ministers are currently in the Dáil answering oral parliamentary questions, which is why I am here.

The Government fully recognises the importance of early intervention for children with disabilities in Ireland, including those living in Cavan. In early 2023, the specialist disability function transferred from the Department of Health to its current Department. This ensured appropriate focus was given to the challenges being faced by people with disabilities. Under the programme for Government, the Government is committed to ensuring children and their families who need early intervention and therapy input can access that support in a timely way.

Under the roadmap, children’s disability network teams continue to deliver supports for almost 45,000 children with complex needs, and despite increasing demand for services, the total number of children awaiting services has continued to fall nationally. Since the implementation of the roadmap was approved, this national CDNT waiting list has reduced from circa 16,500 to closer to 10,000 children at the end of September of this year.

Children’s disability network team staffing remains a key priority. The most recent CDNT workforce survey conducted outlines 2,009 posts filled in CDNTs and 445 posts vacant as of April. This survey outlines continued growth in staffing in all regions and a corresponding reduction in vacancy rates. There is an overall national increase of 8% in staffing in the CDNT workforce compared to the workforce as of the last survey in October 2024. This means there is an overall reduction in unfilled posts from 29% in October 2023 to 18% in April 2025, and an overall growth in the workforce of 415 whole-time equivalent staff since October 2023. The Government has continued to make funding available in 2025 for children’s services.

Speaking on Cavan specifically, the HSE has advised that the total number of children receiving services in a CDNT at the end of November stood at 380. The number of children on the waiting list at the end of November stood at 194 children, with 172 of those waiting over 12 months. To tackle these challenges, waiting list supports and initiatives have been put in place in CDNT services in Cavan, such as: diagnostic assessments, cognitive assessments and discipline-specific assessments outsourced to private providers; use of therapy assistant posts to support clinicians in service provision; and the use of recruitment agencies to source staff where Enable Ireland’s normal recruitment pathways have been unsuccessful. The HSE has also advised that staffing levels have improved in the last 12 months, and the local team is systematically working through the longest waiters on the waiting list. The Senator acknowledged that in relation to staffing. The Minister does reaffirm, however, that the Government, the HSE and its funded agencies remain committed to the delivery of appropriate services for children with disabilities and their families and to continue advancing services that meet their needs.

I provide this reply not in any sort of political or combative way but to try to say that the Senator outlines very real and stark concerns about the upper-end waiting times that these poor children, whose cases the Senator has raised in the Chamber, may be facing into. I wanted to provide the real context and say we were aware of that and were acknowledging it. We are committed to, and are, putting the resources in, which we hope will reduce those waiting lists and, more importantly, make sure those children are seen a heck of a lot sooner than is perhaps thought at the moment.

I thank the Minister of State. The two examples I have raised relate to primary care, but there are waiting lists for both primary care and CDNT. There is actually a lot of frustration and confusion even when children are referred from one team to the other. I know these matters fall to two different Departments, but they are all matters for the HSE, or the HSE with Enable Ireland.

Regarding the CDNT, the staffing levels have improved but there is considerable frustration from parents still around the lack of assessment. There are a lot of courses being run for parents on how to support their children. Parents are more than willing and able and are happy to do those courses but they are saying the children need the contact with the therapists and that that is not happening to the extent it should be. Some children have had no actual engagement at all with a therapist, or very limited engagement, and the parents are watching the children struggling. The same happens with primary care. The primary care lists are extremely long. What plan does the Government have to try to address this? There needs to be a workforce plan to put in more speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and so on. I could go on. I raised two examples but I could have raised any number of examples of different children in similar circumstances.

It is important to recognise that, while those two specific cases were very clearly brought to this Chamber, I know they are representative of a much wider cohort, not just in Cavan, but around the country. The Senator is right to ask what the workforce plan is and what the solution is to make sure that those children do not just get assessed in time but get that one-on-one contact with the therapists they need. Budget 2026 has provided €20 million for the delivery of some 6,000 clinical assessments to the targeted waiting list and a further €8 million has been secured in the budget to allow for the funding of 150 additional posts to the children and disability network teams. Over the last five years, the disabilities workforce in the HSE and section 38 providers has grown by over 21%. This is the key issue and it is mirrored in relation to additional places in our third level institutions. We need more staff. The more staff we have, the more people will get their assessments and therapies. We are working on a concrete plan to make sure that is rolled out in a timely manner.

I welcome the Minister of State. Day services for adults with disabilities provide a vital network of support for more than 25,000 people across this State, individuals whose personal circumstances, interests and aspirations are widely diverse. There are people with physical, sensory and learning disabilities. They range from young adults beginning their journey into adult life to older people of retirement age. They live in small communities in isolated rural areas and in towns and cities in every part of our country.

In 2007, a comprehensive review of HSE-funded adult day services was initiated to modernise and reconfigure the services we were providing. The purpose was clear: to bring these services into alignment with the principles of person-centredness, quality and accountability, and to ensure that every adult with a disability had access to supports that enabled them to live a life of their choosing. The review culminated in the publication of the New Directions report in 2012, which marked a radical shift from provider-led programmes towards user-led supports.

Under New Directions, services are designed so that adults with disabilities can participate as equal citizens in their communities and contribute meaningfully to those communities. Crucially, the report also states that the new approach must be underpinned by nationally agreed standards. However, work remains to be completed. As part of that review, a census was conducted which highlighted a significant absence of nationally agreed or clear definitions about what constitutes a day service. The report describes services that have developed without the benefit of a coherent national guidance framework or robust quality assurance systems. A consultation engaged more than 1,500 people, including service users, families, service providers and the public, on what is working well and what is not.

In regard to what people want to see in future service provision, the consultation highlighted the striking differences in people's experiences of services and underlined the need for quality assurance systems and support for providers to achieve common standards. Providers themselves argued for quality standards grounded in person-centred principles alongside systems for monitoring services and support to provide them. The New Directions framework established that all service providers must work with the HSE to prepare plans for delivering New Directions within a quality assurance framework that the HSE will develop. That commitment to quality is to be expressed in service standards and in the arrangements made for monitoring and evaluating services. Yet, almost 14 years after New Directions was published, we still do not have a permanent national standard for community hubs and service locations used for day services.

Interim standards were developed by the HSE to check how well adult day services are following New Directions but providers are not yet being inspected against these interim standards. Instead, the HSE has asked all adult day services to self-evaluate their services against the interim standards, with support and training on how to do so. Managers must now start self-evaluations which must include asking stakeholders to rate how their service is doing. Providers must set actions for areas where stakeholders agree there is room for improvement. This process is intended to promote continuous improvement in service quality. Despite this progress, very few positive comments have been made about the buildings or locations used by day services. Many people benefit from their day services but others describe unhelpful or negative experiences. These differences highlight the need for reform, quality assurance systems and support for providers to meet common standards.

I accidentally walked into a community hub and was surprised at how basic it looked, given that the people using the hub had originally been availing of the day services in Stewarts Care, which was providing a high standard of amenities. I asked the Minister when she would instruct her Department to instruct the HSE to establish and publish clear national standards for community hubs and buildings used for day services for adults with disabilities and when those standards would be subject to independent inspection, for example, by HIQA, rather than self-evaluation? We know the interim standards exist. We know self-evaluation is under way. We do not yet have clarity on when nationally agreed permanent standards and an independent inspection regime will be in place.

Adults with disabilities deserve day services that reflect dignity, quality and consistency, as set out in New Directions. It is time to bring this long-promised reform to completion by setting out a firm timeline for standards that ensure quality, safety and inclusion in every community hub used for day services.

I am grateful to Senator Costello for raising this important issue and offering me an opportunity to respond on behalf of the Minister, who, as per Senator Tully, finds herself in the Dáil answering oral questions. As a heads-up to Senator Scahill, the next Minister due in will also be in the Dáil in about ten minutes' time. I am sorry to say I have been entrusted with responding on behalf of both of them.

Day services, as the Senator laid out, are part of a suite of support services that enable people with specialist disability services needs to live within the community. As outlined by the Senator, the New Directions policy, published in 2013, lays out the manner in which adults with disabilities receive disability day services. This policy is underpinned by the values of person-centredness, community inclusion, active citizenship and equality. Each person should have access to flexible and outcome-driven supports to enable them to live a life of their choosing that meets their own wishes, aspirations and needs.

In 2025, the HSE projects it will provide day services to 20,600 individuals with a disability, up from just over 19,500 in 2024, together with a further 2,000 or more in rehabilitative training services. These services are provided at almost 1,300 locations around the country by 97 service provider agencies. Adult day services and rehabilitative training programmes are delivered by a combination of the HSE section 38 and section 39 organisations, as well as private providers.

The New Directions policy is implemented using a continuous quality improvement approach under the guidance of the New Directions implementation group and in line with New Directions standards published in 2025, which were referred to as interim standards at the time. These interim standards, or standards, continue to underpin the delivery of New Directions day services. They require service providers and key stakeholders to involve people with disabilities in the design, delivery, monitoring and evaluation of the services and supports provided.

The implementation plan for these standards was developed in conjunction with the disability sector and in consultation with HIQA. The first phase of the implementation plan for standards focused on developing a process of continuous quality improvement for day services in line with these standards, while the second phase is the development of a monitoring system that will provide a mechanism for assurance quality and safety update services. The HSE, working in partnership with the National Disability Authority, persons using adult day services and the disability umbrella bodies, is developing an outcomes-focused monitoring system for adult day services in support of implementing standards.

In preparation for a formal monitoring structure, all day service locations are required, as the Senator alluded to, to self-evaluate under the evaluation action service improvement process for continuous quality improvement, which features as part of their service agreements with HSE. The consultation on the proposed outcomes-focused monitoring framework for adult day services concluded in the third quarter of 2024 and included 1,800 family responses, separate consultations with 80 service users and 96 direct support staff, and nine focus groups with standard leads across all community health organisations. A series of trial monitoring visits has taken place in 2025 and these visits are due to continue into 2026. The aim of the trials is to test the monitoring approach in a range of adult day service locations, continuing consultation with stakeholders throughout, including having people with a disability as part of the assessment team carrying out the monitoring visits.

In regard to the Senator's more pertinent final question on laying out a hard timeline, there is extreme difficulty in this because the priority for the Minister is to make sure this is done right, is fit for purpose and reflects the true needs. Placing an arbitrary hard timeline is probably not the appropriate thing to do at this stage. However, I agree that this could perhaps move at a faster pace.

I thank the Minister of State for his response. I am concerned about the self-evaluation. An independent evaluation is needed. If we want to do things right, renting a room in a community centre is not the correct standard for the people in question.

I have a few questions. What is the current budget for day services? How much was secured in budget 2026? What was last year's day services capital budget allocation? What was secured for 2026? The Minister of State may not have those answers to hand but I would appreciate it if he could forward the questions to the Minister. I would be glad to get that information. I have a concern about community centre rooms being rented. Independent evaluation should be carried out. A primary care setting would be more appropriate for that.

I thank the Senator again for raising this issue and for her clear questions. Before I get into the detail, and thankfully I have some of those numbers to hand, I will state that the ambition of this Government is to bring about a real step change in services for people with a disability in Ireland. It is committed to the expansion and reform of the disability service in order to maximise people's independence and help to support them. This is reflected in the significant investment made in specialist disability services in recent years, with a record investment of €3.8 billion in 2026 alone. This includes funding for a new cohort of 1,400 school leavers and 53 day service places for non-school leavers. Some €44.3 million was secured in budget 2026 for day services. These services are provided in 1,091 locations by 97 different providers. As I said, there are in total 19,591 people in receipt of day services and 2,132 in rehabilitative training.

I will make sure the Minister forwards further details to the Senator in a timely manner.

I welcome the Minister of State to the Chamber and wish him and his family a happy Christmas. I hope he gets a chance to rest over the Christmas period.

Electricity is an essential service that every household and business in this country relies on every day. That is why decisions around electricity pricing, network investment and charges on consumers must be rooted not only in technical necessity but in common sense.

In the coming year, electricity customers in Ireland will see increased costs of up to €1.75 per month, before VAT, introduced to fund critical investment in the upgrading of our national electricity grid. This investment, sanctioned by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, will see €13.8 billion spent by ESB Networks and EirGrid, with the potential for the figure to rise to €18.9 billion over the next five years if regulatory targets are met.

I have consistently supported investment in our electricity network. A resilient and modern grid is essential to meet the needs of our growing population and changing energy system. These upgrades will facilitate the building of 300,000 new homes by 2030, enable the connection of 1 million electric vehicles and support 680,000 heat pumps. That ambition is welcome and necessary.

However, ambition must also come with fairness. Domestic users will bear 55% of these costs, while businesses will carry 45%. Network tariffs already account for between 25% and 30% of the average electricity bill. At a time when households are under significant financial pressure, this cannot be ignored. While the extension of the VAT reduction on electricity, the widening of eligibility for the fuel allowance between September and April and targeted support for low income families are all positive steps, they do not address the basic issue of fairness. A standing charge is applied when no electricity is being supplied.

Across the country, thousands of households have experienced prolonged power outages over the past 12 months due to storms, network faults and planned maintenance. In some cases, families were without power for days. During these outages, people were not consuming electricity. They were not using appliances, heating homes or charging devices, yet they were still charged a daily standing charge. The standing charge is intended to cover the cost of maintaining access to the network. That is understandable, but what happens when access is not available? When homes are disconnected from the grid through no fault of the customer, continuing to apply the charges makes little sense and feels deeply unfair. If I have no electricity, I am not paying for units. Equally, I should not pay for standing charges for a service that I am not receiving.

The proposal is not about undermining investment or weakening the grid. In fact, it reinforces accountability and public trust in the system. Waiving the standing charge during verified power outages, whether due to storm damage or scheduled maintenance, would demonstrate that consumers are treated as partners in the energy transition, not simply as a revenue source. As we ask households to shoulder the higher costs of funding long-term resilience, we must also show that the system responds fairly when it fails them. Targeting resources at those on lower incomes remains essential, but fairness should apply to everyone. Waiving the standing charge during outages is a modest and practical reform that acknowledges real hardship, respects common sense and strengthens confidence in our energy system. Investment and fairness must go hand in hand. We can and should deliver both.

I extend my gratitude and many seasonal happy returns for Christmas to Senator Scahill, his family and everyone in the Chamber this morning, in particular the amazing officials in the Houses of the Oireachtas who, when we think it is great to have an amazing late night emergency debate, are the ones who ultimately have to respond very quickly.

Every five years, CRU approves the spending plans of EirGrid and ESB Networks, which are the companies charged with designing, operating, building and maintaining the electricity grid. These companies can then recover these allowed costs from their customers in accordance with tariffs that are approved and monitored by CRU. The Senator will have seen the announcement earlier this week by CRU of price review 6, which covers spending by the grid companies for 2026 to 2030. This investment will deliver the resilience our energy system needs to withstand extreme weather events. The Senator spoke extremely eloquently in this Chamber and elsewhere on the impact of Storm Éowyn and other storms, in particular those affecting his home community of Roscommon.

These regulated network charges are billed from the grid companies to electricity suppliers rather than end customers. Electricity customers pay their supplier a tariff to cover the cost to the supplier of buying electricity from a generator and paying network charges to the grid companies. As mentioned, how the supplier splits its prices between a per unit tariff and a standing charge is a commercial choice for the supplier. Customers are free to switch between suppliers and competition between suppliers allows customers to make significant savings, and we always encourage competition in the market.

Where outages do occur, ESB Networks operates a network repair guarantee. It aims to restore supply within four hours after any interruption. If a customer is without power for 24 hours after ESB Networks is notified of a fault, domestic customers can claim €65 and business customers can claim €130. Customers can claim an extra €35 for every additional 12 hours they are without power. ESB Networks is not able to offer this guarantee in exceptional cases such as storms or extensive disruption to electricity supplies. However, I am sure the Senator will agree with me that ESB Networks responds to storms in an exemplary way.

The electricity and gas retail markets in Ireland operate within the European Union regulatory regime, wherein those markets are commercial, liberalised and competitive. Operating within this framework of responsibility for the regulation of electricity and gas markets is solely a matter for the CRU. It ended its regulation of retail prices in the electricity market in 2011 and in the gas market in 2014. Price setting by suppliers, including standing chargers or waivers, is, therefore, a commercial and operational matter for the companies concerned. I will refer the Senator to the area of the network repair guarantee, which may be a more appropriate model that could be considered, enhanced or improved to deal with the sort of issues he has so clearly laid out in the Chamber.

I thank the Minister of State. I will look into the network repair guarantee. This Commencement matter was timely because it is highly likely that before this House sits again, a lot of my constituents and other constituents across the west will have experienced some outages due to storms that may come. Considering that we did not deliver the guidelines for corridors in forestry this year, which led to a lot of power outages, I had to come to the House and ask for some measure to support constituents during outages. I and my constituents were not familiar with the fact that funding is available for people who experience outages, in particular extended outages over 12 hours or for days. It is something I will make people aware of over the coming weeks and months. I again thank the Minister of State for coming to the House this morning.

I thank the Senator for raising this issue. There were outages in my constituency on Tuesday night, which affected residents in Kilternan, Stepaside and Carrickmines. People wondered what would happen afterwards and what recourse they had, in particular in respect of standing charges which are under price review 6. A lot needs to happen to our infrastructure in this country, in particular energy infrastructure.

The Senator is correct. The review on tree lines and everything else is key. I have no doubt that, in the coming weeks and months and probably before the House returns after the festive break, we will deal with constituents who have unfortunately faced outages due to weather events that happen at this time of year. The guarantee scheme offers an opportunity to such people. This is not a nice thing to have or a luxury for a lot of people; it is the means to be able to buy food at the end of the week. When people lose power, that affects their businesses and farms because there are additional costs in respect of batteries, torches or whatever else. I am very grateful to the Senator for raising this issue.

Nollaig Shona daoibh go léir.