Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste listing the Government's so-called achievements will come as cold comfort to the hundreds of thousands of people who are in arrears. If its measures were so effective, why are 256,000 electricity customers and one in five gas customers in arrears? This is before we head into the winter months. People who are in that situation face a terrifying prospect. If it is all about the war in Ukraine, how does the Tánaiste explain electricity and gas prices here being almost double what they are in the rest of Europe? I will explain it for him. The ESB's profits jumped 30% at the beginning of this year to an incredible €676 million, which is 100% more than it made two years previous to that. It is the same picture for SSE Airtricity, Energia and so on, all of which have seen their profits go through the roof. What will the Tánaiste do about this profiteering? He did not answer my question. Will he reintroduce immediately the moratorium on disconnections? Why can the Government not bring down unit energy prices to the same level as those in the rest of Europe?

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