Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the visitors to the Chamber from the UK Embassy. I am sure they were glad to be here for Senator Currie's contribution. I made a wonderful contribution yesterday, for which they were not in attendance. They will be pleased, for obvious reasons, to have been here to listen to Senator Currie's contribution.

I ask that the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, come to the House for a debate on energy costs. A number of Ministers and Members of the parties in Government have welcomed the announcement by Electric Ireland that the cost of energy bills for businesses will be reduced by 10%. I do not welcome it at all. For the past year and a bit, energy prices went up by 29%, 30% or 32% every time there was an increase. The very first time there is a reduction, which applies only to businesses and not to households, it is only 10%. It seems to me that the people in Electric Ireland heard the Taoiseach's comments last week that he would be asking the energy companies to reduce costs and that there should not be an onus on the State always to be the fallback in supporting people through the energy crisis. One of these businesses, which are making many multiples of millions of euro in profits, and bigger profits this year than they have ever made in any other year, has given a measly 10% cut when wholesale prices have dramatically reduced from what they were before the war. We need a debate in this House in which the Minister tells us what he will do about these companies, which are making huge profits on the back of householders and business owners struggling just to survive and coming up with a measly 10% cut and thinking it is enough. They seem to think people are fools and will just accept such a reduction and say it is fantastic there is a cut at all. It is nowhere near what it should be.