{"id":123884,"date":"2025-10-15T15:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T15:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/123884\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T15:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T15:25:10","slug":"energy-companies-will-factor-in-subsidies-to-gouge-customers-taoiseach-says-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/123884\/","title":{"rendered":"Energy companies will factor in subsidies to \u2018gouge\u2019 customers, Taoiseach says \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Energy companies will keep \u201cgouging\u201d customers if the Government<\/a> keeps providing credits to domestic customers, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> has said.<\/p>\n

Pressure needed to be put on the companies, he added, because they were factoring such subsidies into their costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you keep [giving] them, then we keep underpinning the gouging,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you give \u20ac500 every year it will be factored in.\u201d <\/p>\n

He was referring to various energy credits for households<\/a> issued by Government over recent years.<\/p>\n

Mr Martin was responding in the D\u00e1il to Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> leader Mary Lou McDonald who highlighted reports that energy companies are charging householders three times the wholesale price.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s price gouging, plain and simple; a rip-off, plain and simple,\u201d she said. Ms McDonald said the report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) showed that Ireland has the highest electricity prices in Europe. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese companies are refusing to pass on the drop in wholesale price to their customers,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cBig energy companies are making bumper profits on the backs of working households and hundreds of thousands of those already can\u2019t afford to pay their bills.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms McDonald said the Government was showing \u201cdeference\u201d to the energy companies. \u201cPeople have known for a long time that they are being gouged on their energy bills,\u201d but she said the Government was doing nothing about it.<\/p>\n

The Taoiseach accused her of always going after \u201cthe latest headlines\u201d and asked why she went after the Government instead of \u201cgoing after the companies\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Mr Martin said Minister for Energy Darragh O\u2019Brien had established a national group to look at the regulatory framework governing the pricing of energy. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe need more renewable energy,\u201d but Ireland is almost 80 per cent reliant on imports and one of the fundamental factors affecting energy prices is the price of gas.<\/p>\n

Ms McDonald said the IEA report confirmed Ireland had the highest prices in Europe but the Taoiseach said Ireland had the eighth-highest electricity prices in the EU when adjusted for \u201cpurchasing power parity\u201d.<\/p>\n

People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said energy companies \u201care engaging in blatant profiteering on the backs of ordinary people.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Dublin Southwest TD said there were no controls to stop what Mr Martin himself referred to as \u201cgouging\u201d.<\/p>\n

Asking what the Government would do to help people this winter, he called for energy credits to be reintroduced. <\/p>\n

But the Taoiseach insisted that \u201cwe will not be introducing price controls. They failed in the past and they would fail again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Energy companies will keep \u201cgouging\u201d customers if the Government keeps providing credits to domestic customers, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,2190,4767,18,19,17,16594,5765,27172],"class_list":{"0":"post-123884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cost-of-living","10":"tag-dail-eireann","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-mary-lou-mcdonald","15":"tag-micheal-martin","16":"tag-paul-murphy"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}