European Council Dail Éireann — 2023-02-28 ============================================================ Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire There is literally not a day that goes by when we do not get further evidence of the obscene profiteering of energy companies. The latest, of course, is Electric Ireland finding itself able to reduce prices for business, but not able to do so for householders, and the fact that wholesale prices for energy have now dropped to 18-month and pre-war lows. It appears that while they were able to jack up prices to extortionate levels to crucify ordinary people, they cannot reduce the prices now that wholesale prices have gone down. Is it not long past time that the Taoiseach accepted that the profiteering can only be ended by introducing controls on prices and, indeed, by nationalising the energy sector so it operates on a not-for-profit basis and stops ripping off ordinary people who are being crushed by the cost-of-living crisis? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-02-28/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:38+00:00 Sitting date: 2023-02-28