It is broad.

The second half of a decade is five years. That is the information I have available. I am happy to revert to the Minister if the Senator wants to ask further questions or look for further clarifications from her. That is the information I have.

I welcome our guests. I thank the Senator for making his case. I am here on behalf of the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, who unfortunately has another commitment and cannot be here. At the outset, I want to assure the Senator that the Minister and her Department are acutely aware of the grave humanitarian crisis in Gaza and are working with colleagues in the Department of Foreign Affairs to ensure a co-ordinated national response to this volatile and evolving situation. This includes their work to evacuate I…

I thank the Senator. I will revert with his comments to the official, who may be watching right now. If he has not heard this, I will revert to him with the Senator’s comments about the urgency of this particular case. The Minister recognises the importance of international protection recipients and residents in Ireland from outside the EEA having their family members reunited with them. To this end, the Department engages where necessary with applicants for family reunification to ensure they have every opportunit…

Having regard to the continued high energy costs for households, I am pleased to commend the Electricity Costs (Emergency Measures) Domestic Accounts Bill 2023 to the House. This Bill will establish two schemes to give further support to households with their electricity bills, following the success of the previous two electricity costs emergency benefit schemes, in 2022 and 2023. The electricity costs emergency benefit scheme III will see three payments of €137.61, excluding VAT, made to approximately 2.2 million …

I thank Senators very much. Senators McGahon and Garvey welcomed the Bill. They pointed out the improved fairness and the fact that people who received double payments last time will be excluded if their homes were vacant and many of the people who fell through the cracks last time will receive payments this time around. Deputy Boylan pointed out that she is happy we are including a submeter scheme and also that we are excluding vacant homes. She pointed out that she tabled versions of these amendments in the previ…

I thank Senator Boylan. I will take amendments Nos. 6 and 11 together. Amendment No. 6 relates to section 5 of the Bill and the functions of electricity suppliers in relation to the scheme. Amendment No. 11 relates to the Title of the Bill. These amendments seek to insert text or remove arrears limits on prepaid meters. As with the previous electricity credit schemes, prepayment customers will have the payments credited to their account and suppliers will engage with customers regarding arrangements for this. Suppl…

Amendment No. 7 relates to section 6 of the Bill and the review by electricity suppliers for customers who did not receive payment under the scheme. It is necessary that we have this review in place because we are going to exclude a large number of people with vacant homes. We want to make sure that we are rightly excluding them and that we are dealing with exceptional cases in a fair way. While I thank the Senators for these suggested additions I am proposing to reject this amendment. Proposed amendments for part …

The preparation for this Bill was quite different from last year's legislation. A great deal of work went into this, starting approximately six months ago. I thank the departmental officials for their work on the Bill, as well as the community groups, voluntary groups, etc., that engaged with me. For example, the Money Advice & Budgeting Service, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and other groups that deal with vulnerable people came to meet with us and made suggestions on how the Bill could be improved. I thank e…

I did not know that Senator Garvey had been planning to join Sinn Féin.

Would Senator Boylan have let her in? This is a Bill to prevent the dumping of unsold products. There is a moral imperative on commercial bodies that are taking part in the circular economy to fulfil their obligations in the same way that we expect that individuals will segregate their waste. It is for that reason that I brought in regulations earlier in the summer that require commercial operators, entities and businesses to segregate their waste correctly. As a result, we have much higher streams of available pla…

Reporting is incredibly important and essential to transparency. The reporting obligations for this Bill are provided for in section 26(6). That section states that both the audited accounts and report of the Comptroller and Auditor General will be laid before each House of the Oireachtas by the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications once they are received from the collection agent. This section also provides for the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, to manage the relevant accounts, thus …

I thank the Deputies very much for their lyrical contributions. I want to start by clarifying something. Would Deputy Whitmore mind reading out the amendment she has tabled because the numbering on my list is different? Amendment No. 2, which I believe we are on, in my book does not refer to hedging. For absolute clarity, would Deputy Whitmore mind reading out the amendment? I do not think it is very long.

The amendment that has been read out is amendment No. 4 in my book but it is the Deputy's amendment No. 2. If it is okay, we are ready to go ahead. All of the Deputies were-----

-----speaking on the hedging arrangement so we are all fine here. I thank Deputy Whitmore. We are all clear. I thank the Deputies for their contributions. I thank Deputy Whitmore for tabling the amendment. The cap on market revenues, including the hedging arrangements that pertain to it, is going to apply, as per the Council regulation, from 1 December 2022 to 30 June 2023. It is not going to be extended beyond this timeframe. The Department received legal advice on applying the cap beyond these dates. It advised t…

I will start by responding to Deputy Whitmore. There is one period specified in this Bill and it applies to the prices that were obtained by generators, to hedging arrangements, to traders and to other intermediaries. The price is to be captured through any of those different mechanisms. I am not sure it would make sense to have a different period for hedging arrangements from the period specified for all of those other participants in the market. Deputy Mattie McGrath is worried that this Bill does not capture pro…

All of that money is ring-fenced for-----

-----redistribution to energy consumers in a targeted way. That is what it says in the law. We have to redistribute the money we collect. It is a windfall tax based on unfair profits earned by these companies and the money legally has to be ring-fenced and redistributed to those customers who overpaid for their power in the first place. In that sense, it is a very fair and redistributive tax.

I am tempted to address all the points but I will stick to the amendment. To Deputy Danny Healy-Rae, climate action is all about electrification, including electrification of transport and heating. In urban areas there will be district heating, which is not electrification but there is a move towards electrification. Therefore, there needs to be an increased focus on price regulation and making sure people are not making unfair profits in any sector in the market. That is why we are taking the unfair profits from t…

I thank the Deputy for her amendment. As she knows, European law supersedes national legislation. Whatever is in the European law applies and has to apply. The Council regulation states: Member States shall ensure that all surplus revenues resulting from the application of the cap on market revenues are used to finance measures in support of final electricity customers that mitigate the impact of high electricity prices on those customers, in a targeted manner. We have to do it in that way; we have no choice. It is…