Paul Murphy: Says households 'ripped off' by electricity companies

Irish households are being ripped off by electricity companies. That is not just how they feel about it, it is a fact. We have it in black and white from the International Energy Agency. I will quote from their report. The disparity in Ireland, talking about the gap between wholesale electricity prices and retail prices, was the largest in all of Europe. With the energy component of retail prices three times higher than wholesale prices. In plain language, the reason we have the highest electricity prices in Europe, is because the electricity companies are engaged in blatant profiteering off of the back of ordinary people. SSC Electricity declared profits of 113 million to the end of March 2025, Energia 33 million for the first quarter alone, 39 million in the first half of this year. The cost of their profits is a crisis for households, one in three of whom are now in energy poverty. Those families are facing a cold, long, dark winter Taoiseach. They are facing electricity companies that one after the other have hiked their prices in recent weeks, and their worry is confounded by the failure of the government to do anything in last week's budget to protect them. The economists are very clear. Your budget will lead to an increase in poverty, particularly for older people and for renters who are more likely to suffer from energy poverty in poorly insulated homes. No energy credits, despite the fact that people's bills are higher now than they were last year. No price controls to stop what I think you described earlier as price gouging. No significant investment in retrofitting that we need to give people warmer homes and much reduced bills. No change from the policy of households subsidising the data centres of the big tech companies, paying for their hundreds of millions of euros of so-called capacity payments. The fundamental root of all of this is the so-called liberalisation of the energy market, the artificial creation of a market where we must pay for the profit of all these different corporations. We have gone from a situation where we had the ESB as the sole publicly owned, not-for-profit generator and supplier of electricity. The success that was a global success, the ground-breaking rural electrification scheme which became a model around the world, the lowest electricity prices in Europe. We went from that to the highest because of the neoliberal orthodoxy of the 1990s and 2000s that meant that anything state owned had to be broken up and privatised. It is a process that should be reversed. We should have a renationalisation on a not-for-profit basis. My question for you, Taoiseach, is you spoke earlier about what are we going to do to put pressure on the energy companies to lower the prices. That is my question to you. Will you introduce price controls, as is proposed in our emergency price controls bill, or you have the power to do under the Consumer Protection Act, or at the very least, will you reverse course in the energy credits and give people something to protect them? I think it is quite interesting that a far-left party and representative as yourself is an advocate for universal credits for the wealthiest in society, as well as everybody else. It is quite an extraordinary contradiction in terms of your often articulated viewpoints. The Minister has established the National Energy Affordability Task Force, because there is an issue with affordability of energy, that is acknowledged. You have made the point that you would get rid of the regulatory framework and go back to a renationalisation of our energy system. There is no guarantee, if you are just renationalised, that you will get cheaper prices differently. We should not pretend that you would. Of course, fundamentally, we have to invest an enormous amount now into expanding our grid and making sure it is fit for purpose for a growing economy and a growing population. The population is growing exponentially. We have had extraordinary economic growth over a long period of time. We have managed, actually, contrary to most of established economic norms, to maintain or indeed reduce marginally income inequality in this country, thanks to our progressive taxation system. With that said, it has impacts on other areas. The Minister has met with the companies. We focused our work in terms of trying to protect those who would be most affected by energy price increases. Addressing energy affordability is key for us. You said nothing in the budget. The historic VAT rate of 13.5 per cent, for example, has been applied to gas and electricity. We have reduced that since 2022 to 9 per cent. Budget 26 extended this reduction to the end of 2030. If we hadn't done that, that would have meant significant increases in electricity prices and gas prices. The fuel allowance has gone up to 38 euro per week now. That is an increase of more than 15 per cent. That would provide an additional 140 to over 460,000 recipients during the annual fuel allowance season. That payment has been extended, expanded to include those in receipt of the working family payment. So targeting our resources to those most in need, I think, makes sense. In addition, our retrofitting programme has been quite impactful, reducing many household energy bills. About half a billion plus has been allocated for residential and community energy schemes. 280 million has been specifically allocated to the warmer home scheme, which provides free retrofits to households in energy poverty. In 2024, this facilitated nearly 8,000 energy upgrades in low-income households. We have also taken action. You mentioned it. We did, during the height of the energy crisis, provide energy credits. For sustainable public finance reasons, it makes sense, I think, that we target our resources through retrofitting, through warmer home programmes, for those who would be most impacted. And then the Minister is working with the companies and making sure that no one is cut off and that there are hardship funds there to help people more generally who could get into difficulty as a result of increased energy prices. Tidak, earlier you posed the question, what are we proposing to do to pressurise the energy companies to lower the costs? And I put forward that we should put forward, we have a bill already to have price controls, so to stop the blatant profiteering. And I put back to you, what are you going to do? And the answer, it appears, is nothing. You mentioned a bunch of things that have already been done. You are standing over the withdrawal of the cost of living supports, and the impact of that is going to be deeper poverty. It was spoken about that this is a budget for child poverty, it absolutely was a budget for child poverty, to increase child poverty. You can look at the report of the Parliamentary Budget Office, an impartial office, which says that income poverty rises nationally from 11.7% in 2024 to a forecast level of 13.2% in 2025, due to the withdrawal of the cost of living package. Income poverty rates rise most for the elderly, from 13.3% in 2024 to a forecast level of 19%. Child poverty also increases. Your budget increased poverty in this state. We have evidence now that people are being ripped off by the energy companies who are charging three times what they are paying for the electricity. Three times. And you are saying we will do nothing about it. We will not do the price controls. Now we are under the Consumer Protection Act to introduce price controls to stop this profiteering. And people want you to act. Mr Deputy, that is out of order. We will not be introducing price controls. They have failed in the past and they would fail again. In terms of child poverty, in terms of consistent poverty, poverty is the key metric, not relative poverty. You did not qualify which you were talking about. Consistent poverty is what we have to deal with. And our child poverty programme in the Budget was very significant, highest in a long, long time. And the once-off payments were just that for two years in a row and before that. During COVID, we had to intervene and join the energy crisis. They are not sustainable over a decade. They cannot just keep going on because we would not have sustainable public finances if we went down that route. And equally it is arguable that very wealthy people do not need an energy credit. You are arguing that they do. I find that incredible. We do tax. It is a progressive tax system, which basically means that our income inequality has reduced despite very significant strong economic growth. We believe in enterprise. You do not. You have a broader view of how markets and economy should run. That is fundamental to every particular, specific proposal that you bring in on a given issue in here. Time is up. It has to be seen in the overall round in terms of what kind of society you want. I would respectfully suggest that the Irish people do not quite want the society. Go ra maigot. Go ra maigot. Go ra maigot. 来了 screen and Milk