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

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta as ucht a cuid ceisteanna. I want to acknowledge the fact that businesses and people are facing very high electricity and gas bills, and as a result of that a lot of households are struggling, particularly pensioner and low-income households. A lot of small businesses are also struggling with very high utility bills. Mar a dúirt an Teachta, tá an costas maireachtála an-ard. Tá an praghas ar leictreachas agus ar ghás an-ard ach tá an Rialtas anseo agus tá sé ag cabhrú. As the Deputy mentioned in her question, utility bills are now very high. I meet people, including individual homeowners and business people who show me their bills, and it has been a real shock for a lot of people. In many ways a lot of those big electricity and gas bills have only been arriving in recent weeks. In the run-up to Christmas and around Christmas, people thought it might not be so bad, and then the winter bills started arriving in January and February and people got a really big shock. Unfortunately, there are more bills to come in March and April. However, the Government is acting. We have taken three major actions to help people with these high costs. First is the decision to keep the VAT rate on electricity and gas at 9% until the end of October, the lowest VAT rate we have ever had on electricity and gas. We have also decided to pay energy credits and there is still another €200 energy credit to come off people's bills for the March and April period. We have also substantially improved the temporary business energy support scheme to help businesses, farmers, professionals and sole traders with their bills so that more people can qualify, so they can get more money back and it is backdated to September, which will help a lot of people.

It is welcome that two companies so far have announced price reductions. Pinergy has announced reductions for retail customers and Electric Ireland has announced reductions for its business customers but that is nowhere near enough. Wholesale prices are coming down and I understand that there is a lag between wholesale prices coming down and retail prices for homeowners and businesses coming down. I get that but it should not be too much of a lag. It only took a few months for prices to go up so it should only take a few months for prices to go down. We expect to see electricity and gas companies reduce their prices over the course of the coming months for businesses and residential customers.

It will not just be about polite encouragement; there is a windfall tax coming and that will be legislated for in this House and in the Seanad. That will allow us to recoup some of the profits and give them back to people in the form of reductions in bills. We have to work out the exact mechanisms around that but that is what we intend to do. We will also be saying to State-owned companies that if they make hyper profits we have the power to take some of those off them in the form of a special dividend and use that money to help people as well.

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