Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Bare Food Company in Drogheda is a small business.

It received an electricity bill of €3,500 in April. Its latest bill is for €8,000. The story relating to the company is on the front page of our local paper as a result of the fact that it is asking its customers to leave early in the afternoon because it cannot afford to light the shop, cook the food or keep the fridges going the way it wants to. I welcome all of the Tánaiste's announcements and the work he is doing but businesses under a certain size find it much harder to bear the increased costs of their heating and cooling operations, particularly butchers like Callaghans in Ardee, the Bare Food Company and Tuites Butchers in Drogheda. Many people have serious worries. I ask the Tánaiste to look again at smaller businesses, which do not have the margin capacity of larger businesses to shift their profit and losses on different accounts.

See this speech in context