Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I reiterate what the Taoiseach has said on the matter. I understand changes in energy markets are passed through at different speeds to different kinds of customers. Businesses experienced sharp increases in electricity bills before households. I know one energy provider put the cost of energy up in January. I understand that just as the bills went up quicker for some customers, they will also go down quicker.

For households generally, as the Taoiseach has said and I have said on a number of occasions, we expect that as improvements happen in the cost of sourcing energy into our country, it will feed through into an improvement in the affordability of energy for households. It cannot take months for the price of bills to go up and years for the price to go down if we are seeing stability or improvement in the affordability of energy to the companies who supply it to Ireland. We will monitor the situation closely. We have had, through the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, engagement with energy companies across the end of last year and will see whether further engagement is needed and whether steps such as a windfall tax can play a role in dealing with a higher level of profit, if that becomes apparent.

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