Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

While the people of this country are showing extraordinary solidarity and generosity in terms of the terrible suffering of the Ukrainian people, they are simultaneously being crucified by the spiralling costs of living, electricity and gas prices, energy prices and so on. The latest bad news in that regard is the ESRI report that the rate of inflation will hit 8.7% this summer. People's incomes and savings and their ability to pay their bills are being wiped out. In the face of this, the Government and, I stress, other European Governments and the American Government, all of which will be meeting in Europe this week, are saying that they are more or less powerless and that there is nothing they can do, even more so now because of the Ukraine war.

Is the Minister familiar with the concept of war profiteering? I suggest he, the Government and the EU leaders make themselves familiar with this concept. War profiteering is a disgusting practice whereby ordinary people are asked to endure incredible hardship, financial and otherwise, as a result of war but where private companies and businesses make superprofits at the expense of everybody else's misery, exploiting the crisis and the war. I suggest to the Minister that this is what we are seeing across the world. We are seeing war profiteering on an industrial scale by the producers of fuel and energy and the suppliers of fuel and energy, globally, in Europe and in this country and the bill for that is being picked up in terms of the extreme hardship, energy poverty and so on that people are suffering.

I will give some facts in regard to the profits of these companies. The profits of the French company, TotalEnergies, are up 300% to €16.1 billion; BP's profits have increased to €13 billion, its highest profits in eight years; Shell's profits are up to €19 billion, again the highest in eight years; Chevron Corporation's profits are up to €15 billion; ExxonMobil's profits are up to €23 billion and the profits of Aramco, the Saudi company, are up 124% to €110 billion. This is mirrored in this country with the ESB's profits up 10% to €679 million and Energia's profits up 46% to €35 million. What is the Government going to do about that? While everybody else is being told to suffer, to endure hardship, these energy companies and petrol companies are making a fortune. If the European leaders who are meeting this week in Europe can take unprecedented action to impose sanctions on Putin's bloody regime, could not they take unprecedented action to stop the war profiteering that we are seeing from energy and electricity companies and the producers of petrol and gas across Europe to control the prices such that ordinary people are suffering?

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