Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

These issues will be kept under constant review by the Government. The measures we have announced today will cost approximately €320 million. That is on top of the €550 million package we announced just one month ago. The €125 fuel allowance payment will occur next week and that one specific decision will benefit approximately 390,000 recipients. On the broader European issue, we are advocating for greater flexibilities with regard to what member states can do to offset the pressures on consumers and people more generally resulting from the war in particular. Prior to the war, issues relating to emergence from the Covid pandemic and restrictions on gas supplies, which may have pre-empted the war, were already driving prices up fairly significantly. Since the commencement of the war, prices have shot up even further. The impact of that has been very hard on people. We are trying to cushion that blow as much as we possibly can but there are limits to what we can do arising from existing regulatory frameworks that were adopted by everyone in Europe in peacetime. I take the Deputy's point about wartime.

In themselves, price caps cannot work. Oil is an internationally traded commodity.

Therefore, people will pay a price for it. We cannot expect a retailer who pays a wholesaler a certain price to just arbitrarily put a cap on a price. Likewise, all the way along the chain, people will not sell petrol at a loss. The issue of a price cap is being articulated without the obvious implications being fully thought through. It simply would not work because it is a market where we are price takers.

The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission is there to monitor price gouging and can go after anybody where there is evidence of price gouging. The Deputy raised a fair point in respect of existing supplies procured prior to the increases in prices. That authority works independently and has its responsibilities and obligations.

This morning we had a preliminary meeting in advance of the informal EU Council meeting in Versailles over the next two days. This morning four countries engaged on the issue of energy pricing with the President of the Council. Particularly in the context of the war, these are issues that we will be pushing. We will be advocating for maximum flexibility in how we respond to the price pressure on people.

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