Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

A windfall tax on energy companies is weeks away. I do not think we are late in the day because companies pay tax now on profits they made last year and last year only ended six or eight weeks ago. We will have that tax in place in the near future. It will be retrospective in the sense that the companies will pay it on the profits they made last year and will pay it again on the profits they make this year, so we will have two years of revenue coming in from that windfall tax. We will be able to use that to help businesses and households with the high cost of energy and the high cost of living. It will be a few months before we start seeing those gas and electricity prices fall but I believe we will start seeing them fall in a few months' time - first for businesses and. subsequent to that, for households.

We do not have exact figures yet but we do anticipate that a number of State energy companies will record very high profits, with the ESB being one of those. There are two mechanisms we can use to recoup some of those profits. One is the special dividend while the other is the windfall tax. We intend to use those mechanisms to take that money back and make sure we can use it to help homes, families and businesses with the cost of living.

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