Electricity Supply: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-30 ============================================================ Joanne Collins (SF), Agricultural Panel Nobody disputes that when families or businesses lose power through no fault of their own they deserve fair treatment. If people are left without electricity for hours or even days, particularly following severe weather events, they should not be expected to pay standing charges for a service that they cannot use. While there is merit in ensuring consumers are compensated during outages, we must also be honest with people. Refunding a standing charge for a period without power is a very small measure in the context of the enormous energy costs households are facing every single month. For many families the standing charge is not the biggest problem. The real problem is that Ireland has some of the highest electricity prices in Europe. Families are struggling to pay bills month after month, businesses are struggling with soaring operating costs, and people are cutting back on essentials simply just to keep the lights on. The Government wants to present this motion as an answer to energy affordability; it is not. At best it deals with a symptom. It does nothing to address the underlying cause of why electricity has become so unaffordable in the first place. Ordinary workers and families are being fleeced while energy companies are continuing to make enormous profits. Time and again this Government has claimed that these prices are simply unavoidable, as though nothing can be done. That simply is not true. These are political choices. The Government has repeatedly refused to support Sinn Féin legislation that would finally give the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, the powers that it needs to hold energy companies to account. Our proposals would require proper oversight of energy companies, priced-in practices and hedging strategies. They would give the regulator stronger powers to investigate and sanction anti-competitive behaviour. They would require far greater transparency around how prices are set. Crucially, they would place affordability at the heart of energy regulation rather than treating it as an afterthought. We have also brought forward legislation to regulate standing charges. At present, suppliers can impose these fixed charges with remarkably little scrutiny. Before a family even switches on a light or boils a kettle, they are already paying substantial fixed costs. That cannot go unchecked. We also need to ask a fundamental question about fairness. Why are ordinary households paying higher network charges than some of the largest energy users in the State? Families are effectively subsidising a system where major data centres benefit from significantly lower network costs despite placing enormous demands on our electricity infrastructure. Households should not be paying six, seven and sometimes eight times more in network charges while multinational corporations receive preferential treatment. That is simply not fair. The Government rightly points to investment in our electricity grid and renewable energy. Investment is necessary. Nobody disputes that but investment alone means little if ordinary people cannot afford to pay their bills. The long-term answer is to reduce our dependency on imported fossil fuels through faster delivery of renewable energy and greater public investment in our energy capacity. Ireland has enormous renewable potential but progress has been painfully slow. Delays every year mean that families are once again exposed to international conflicts and volatile global energy markets. The human consequences are impossible to ignore. Hundreds of thousands of households are now in energy debt. More families are falling into long-term arrears and the number of disconnections is increasing. Behind every one of those figures is a household forced to choose between heating, food and other basic necessities. That is the real energy crisis Ireland is facing today. Yes, let us ensure that consumers receive refunds where they lose electricity supply through no fault of their own. I completely agree that the situation is totally unfair. However, let us not pretend that refunding a few euro in standing charges addresses a crisis where households are paying hundreds of euro more each year than families elsewhere in Europe. People deserve more than token gestures. They deserve an energy system that is fair, transparent and affordable. They deserve a regulator that has the power to tackle profiteering and price gouging. They deserve proper regulation of standing charges. We support the motion, even though I have said it is a small thing. I will take the positivity sandwich approach. I started positive and then I gave the criticism. However, it is only a small thing. There is a huge issue when it comes to energy in this country. All you have to do is knock on a few doors and see people's bills. People are struggling. I would welcome this small move but I would love to see the Government bring in something big. Perhaps it could give those powers to the CRU so that it could do a deep dive and look into what these energy companies are making and how much the data centres are paying compared to households. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-30/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:07+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-30