Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Gerry Clarke, a 77-year-old pensioner from Navan, got a bill for two months of €1,600. Kitty, a woman over 100 years old, from Trim, gets a bill of nearly €1,000. These people are simply the collateral damage of this Government's inaction on the cost of energy at the moment. They are not alone. Right now, a full third of the population is in fuel poverty. That means these individuals are suffering significantly due to their inability to heat their homes. They are going without food in many cases to do that. People are being pushed into overdrafts, if they are lucky enough to get into an overdraft. People are being pushed to moneylenders to try to make ends meet. On the other side of the equation are the energy companies, which are making massive profits. Shell and BP made €70 billion worth of profit. Even the Irish companies such as Electric Ireland are making massive money. Bord Gáis Energy and the Corrib gas fields are seeing their profits increase massively at a time when the price of gas is 58% lower than it was last August. It has fallen significantly from the peak.

Three things are happening. People are being hammered with the cost of fuel, energy companies are profiteering and gouging those families for profits and they are doing that on the basis of the volatility created by the war. In my opinion, it is in the Government's interest to keep prices this high. The Government slapped on carbon taxes a number of months ago because it wants high prices. High prices reduce consumption, which is an objective of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party. High profits sweeten the pot for foreign investors in terms of investing in electricity supply in this country. There is no doubt in my mind this is not happening by accident. The Government is not sitting on its hands by accident. It is watching and waiting to see what happens. Other countries like Britain, Italy, Greece, Romania and Hungary were able to put in windfall taxes, to harvest billions of euro from those taxes and to invest that in helping people suffering due to the cost increases in energy.

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