The government has ruled out imposing a windfall tax on the profits of energy companies here, and refused to support a similar motion at EU level it can be revealed.
A response to a PQ submitted by the office of Lynn Boylan MEP revealed that when Simon Harris had the opportunity to support an EU wide initiative to introduce a windfall tax, he stood back and did nothing.
This inaction was slammed as utterly irresponsible by Lynn, the Sinn Féin MEP for Dublin, who pointed to figures which showed over 300,000 people were in energy arrears here, even before the latest price spikes as a result of the illegal attacks on Iran by the US and Israel.
“Simon Harris insists that he can’t act in isolation, yet when he had an opportunity to join finance ministers from other EU states in trying to introduce a windfall tax, he sat on his hands.
Lynn pointed to a report by the Currency which show that €180m remains unspent from the last time that the government introduced a windfall tax, as further evidence that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have no interest in doing anything to help ordinary households.
Even before the current crisis, energy companies were making massive profits.
“Bord Gáis, and SSE both recorded profits of €72.5m and €39.5m respectively. Even ESB and Energia, who saw a fall in their profits, still recorded €636m, and €81.65m respectively.
“These profits are being built up by people who are paying the highest charges for energy in Europe, with no supports from government, while data centres pay less than half of what these households do – even though they use up over 50% of the energy produced in Dublin alone.”
“It’s funny how this Government doesn’t need ‘EU-wide initiatives’ to give data centres half-price electricity, but suddenly they are powerless to tax the companies making millions off the back of Irish households.
“Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s legacy is that they’ve taken us from having the cheapest energy in Europe, to the most expensive.
“Fixing this issue must be a top priority for the government”.
