Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is truly shocking that the Government and the EU have been so slow to address the broken electricity pricing system. Last Friday, the EU Governments finally agreed to act. Sadly, “as little as possible and as late as possible” seems to be the policy there, with a token windfall tax that lets oil and gas companies keep the vast majority of profits. How will that even work for the likes of Corrib gas, which has €1.2 billion in write-offs against profit? The tax will not even apply to the electricity companies we see making bumper profits in Ireland, and the ESB made €679 million profit last year. The plan calls for the decoupling of the price of renewable electricity from gas only to set the price against coal. Anyone will tell the Taoiseach that coal is also at historically high levels, which means we will continue to pay four times the price for wind energy. Does the Taoiseach accept we will still be paying far over the odds for renewable electricity? Will the energy companies continue to make huge windfall profits?

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