Greedflation in energy market demands Govt action
Greedflation in energy market demands Govt action - The Labour Party
Reacting to news that SSE Airtricity will hike prices for gas and electricity in April, Labour’s spokesperson on Finance and Public Expenditure, Ged Nash TD said:
“Ireland’s energy companies have been rolling in record profits and now they are taking their customers for April fools with the announcement that they are to put up their bills again, on April 2.
“SSE Airitricity are first out of the gate with the announcement, but have no doubt that others will follow.
“According to media reports today, the changes will see electricity bills hiked by 10.5% and gas bills will rise by 8.4%.
“In real terms, it will see a €171.22 annual increase in the cost of electricity for affected customers and €113.91 for gas.
“The announced increases follow figures from the Central Statistics Office last week that showed that wholesale electricity prices rose by 22.3% in January compared to the previous month and were 67.7% higher than January 2024.
“But wholesale electricity prices are still 56.8% lower when compared with the peak that occurred in August 2022.
“Bills are rising while the cost to the energy companies are falling and what results is giant profits for the providers and giant bills for the hard-pressed consumer.
“The working people of Ireland are getting caught in their pockets and in their sockets and are being taken advantage of, by the energy companies.
“The financial impact on households across the country is very real, as new figures from the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU), show.
“Almost 320,000 families and employers were behind with their electricity bill payments at Christmas while more than 171,000 had gas arrears, according to the recently released CRU figures for December.
“New figures for the month show that 268,555 households had not paid their electricity bills on time in December, while 47,583 businesses were behind with those payments, a total of 319,968.
“The commission’s numbers also show that 163,764 families and 7,833 businesses, a total of 171,597 customers, were in arrears with their gas bills.
“SSE Airtricity says that it regards price hikes as a “last resort” but it seems to me, it’s more often the first port of call for our energy suppliers.
“Profiteering and greedflation in the energy market needs to be tackled by this government who have done nothing about these constant stream of hikes, bar one-off measures that bring only temporary relief to the customer while boosting the profits of the suppliers.
“Ireland has among the most expensive bills for household electricity in the EU and if Irish electricity prices fell to the EU average it would save the average household a third of their annual bills and be worth about €500.
“Labour would focus on how we can cut electricity prices down to the EU average, resulting in savings of a third for households.”