Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is using one isolated case. My job was to look at the entirety of the market at the time and the price increase for LPG in the country. This is what I asked the Department to do and this is what it did do. It came back with the data which showed that there was an 88% increase in the cost of kerosene but only a 19% increase in the cost of LPG during the period. This was, incidentally, the period when there was the greatest increase in energy prices. I must rely on that data rather than on individual cases. I trust that the Department did a thorough job on that. It talked to the industry and got the data from across the country. That is the kind of data which we have to present to the European Commission in order to get state aid approval to be able to intervene in the market. I cannot make decisions on the basis of one business showing an energy bill which it paid. I have to make a case to the European Commission on the basis of the broader market which is what we did.

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