{"id":434944,"date":"2026-05-06T10:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T10:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/434944\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T10:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T10:21:09","slug":"ireland-now-has-the-highest-electricity-prices-in-the-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/434944\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland now has the highest electricity prices in the EU"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ireland officially has the highest household electricity prices in the EU.<\/p>\n

It means the average household in this country pays around \u20ac480 a year more for their electricity compared with the EU average.<\/p>\n

According to the EU\u2019s Eurostat<\/a>, consumer prices here have now surpassed Germany and Belgium, which are the next most expensive.<\/p>\n

\"\"Ireland officially has the highest household charges for electricity in the EU<\/p>\n

Prices per kilowatt hour in this country are more than 40pc above the EU average.<\/p>\n

And there was further bad news for consumers, after PrepayPower, which has 240,000 customer accounts, confirmed an increase in the price of its gas and electricity.<\/p>\n

It will raise electricity prices by 8.8pc from June 1, with gas going up by 10.6pc.<\/p>\n

\"\"Prices per kilowatt hour in this country are more than 40pc above the EU average<\/p>\n

Last month, Energy Minister Darragh O\u2019Brien warned electricity prices could increase by as much as 9% over the summer.<\/p>\n

The Minister said the ongoing conflict in the Middle East could see\u00a0prices<\/a>\u00a0jump by as much as 4 to 9% over May, June, and July.<\/p>\n

At the time, Daragh Cassidy from price comparison website Bonkers.ie told\u00a0Newstalk Breakfast<\/a>\u00a0there needs to be greater transparency surrounding the price increases.<\/p>\n

He said he wants to see \u2018more insight into electricity prices in Ireland\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018We focus a huge amount on the price of wholesale electricity,\u2019 said Cassidy, \u2018but in Ireland, wholesale costs only make up around 30% to 35% of the bill.\u2019<\/p>\n

He added: \u2018To put that another way, if you have an electricity bill for \u20ac100, around \u20ac30 to \u20ac35 goes to the cost of the gas or the wind and the things that make the electricity, while the other \u20ac60 to \u20ac65 is going on all these other charges.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018So, we don\u2019t really know a huge amount, and I\u2019d love more insight into that.<\/p>\n

\u2018That would help us focus on what\u2019s too high, what\u2019s not so high, and what we can try and lower to make electricity prices more competitive.\u2019<\/p>\n

Only last month, Irish households were found to be paying the third-highest electricity prices in Europe<\/p>\n

Mr Cassidy<\/a> previously said Ireland\u2019s relatively isolated location also adds to the price issue, meaning Ireland can\u2019t import a huge amount of cheaper electricity from abroad.<\/p>\n

\u2018Though the interconnector we\u2019re building with France will hopefully improve things when it comes online in 2027, as it will allow us to tap into generally cheaper French electricity,\u2019 the expert added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland officially has the highest household electricity prices in the EU. It means the average household in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-434944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}