Debate contribution: Household Energy Costs

Debate contribution by Mr David Honeyford on 7 October 2025.

MLA

Mr David Honeyford

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

7 October 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Household Energy Costs

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5165062

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Energy security is one of the defining issues that we need to deal with. Families across Northern Ireland feel the cost of energy in their pockets every single day of the week. That is one the biggest pressures that households face, and it becomes even more acute in low-income households. As an Assembly, we have a responsibility to act to deliver lower costs in order to help hard-earned money stay where it belongs, which is in people's pockets, and to insulate our economy from global shocks. We have seen the price of electricity, gas and everything else, whether it comes from America, Russia or China, rise recently. Only last week, as has been referenced, members of the Economy Committee met the Utility Regulator, which told us just how close Northern Ireland came to an energy blackout very similar to the one that hit Spain and Portugal. That should be a wake-up call for us all. At present, we are dangerously reliant on two out of three of our power stations operating at any one time to keep the lights on. When faults occur, as they have recently, a commercially owned generator can effectively hold the public and the system to ransom. That is not resilience, and it is not security. Why has that happened? One of the biggest issues was not referenced at all by Steve earlier, and I will come on to the Ulster Unionist Party's amendment in a second. As we on the Economy Committee discussed with the Utility Regulator, the biggest single reason is the failure to deliver the North/South interconnector, which would connect the two markets. Every year, that delay costs every household in Northern Ireland around £100 in its bill.

Yes.

I will come on to the amendment, because that is factually not true. How confidently you speak. Last week, you told us, very confidently, that it takes seven hours to go to Dublin to get an aeroplane. That is nonsense as well. This is not a battle between linking with GB and linking with the South. The Ulster Unionists have a tendency to do that in every debate. We need an interconnector to Scotland, and we also need an interconnector to the South. The key difference is that the interconnector to Scotland, as we were told by the experts, will not give us stability on our network. We will still need power stations. To have stability on our network, we need the North/South interconnector to be delivered. We need to have that connection not only to save money but to make us more resilient and to give capacity and stability to our network.

Yes.

I am expecting him to declare an interest. The interconnector was not referenced at all. In fact, you have made it about having a Scottish one instead, when one would not be quicker than the other. This is about creating better for people. It is about delivering better stability and cheaper prices. Everywhere in Europe is connected, yet we seem to have a problem here. It is utterly ridiculous. On the DUP amendment, I say that we cannot support moving away from the ambition contained in the climate targets. To move forward, turning back the clock is not the answer. We need to make up the time that has been lost, and the Department for the Economy needs to act with urgency in order to deliver on renewables.

The motion is to the Minister for Communities. That is the problem, and I raised it yesterday in the Chamber. Every issue that we deal with cuts across multiple Departments, and they all need to work together if we are to deliver any of this. That is a fundamental problem with the Assembly. We have one Minister in front of us, and I thank him for being here, but he is not in control of the energy side. A fundamental problem is that Committees cannot scrutinise all the issues. We have to listen to the science on where we are going, but we also have to look at the economic issues and be on the right side of them in order to deliver better and cheaper energy for everyone. We have constantly called for such reform, and that has to be the way forward if we are to allow change to happen and for issues to be scrutinised and delivered on. This is not only about retrofitting existing homes but about designing for the future by building every social home to the required standards. On the Public Accounts Committee, we recently heard about the Strule campus in Omagh. We are building schools — we have not even started to build some of them — that already need to be retrofitted. That is bonkers. Tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money will be wasted because we allow things to proceed without their having that as its basis. My time is up, however.

820 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 01:21 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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