paying<\/a> approximately 40.42 cents per kilowatt-hour, while the EU average is 28.96 cents – a gap of around 40%. This means that Irish households are forking out an extra \u20ac480 a year more than our EU neighbours at a time when consumers are being squeezed on all sides by rising costs.<\/p>\nSocial Democrats’ energy spokesperson Jennifer Whitmore had led calls for a new energy credit to target households most in need. The plan put forward by the Wicklow TD would give a \u20ac400 credit to all households that have an annual income under \u20ac70,000. It comes as over 300,000 households are in energy arrears.<\/p>\n
Deputy Whitemore said: \u201cThis energy crisis is with us now and getting worse by the day. Help cannot come soon enough for the more than 317,000 people in arrears on their electricity bills, or the families having to choose between heating their homes of putting food on the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo deflect blame, the Government is talking about the National Energy Affordability Taskforce (NEAT) submitting a plan to lower costs in the autumn. Evidence of the Government\u2019s lack of urgency is that this task force only met on three occasions between its foundation in June 2025 and February of this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has been an inexcusable delay by the Government in addressing skyrocketing energy costs \u2013 a crisis that was with us long before the US war with Iran. One of the taskforce\u2019s earlier recommendations \u2013 that there should be an analysis of price differentials to establish if energy companies are engaged in price gouging \u2013 has still not been carried out by the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU).”<\/p>\n
Deputy Whitmore also highlighted that Irish households are approximately \u20ac2,000 a year worse off due to rising energy, grocery, and health insurance costs.<\/p>\n
She continued: \u201cWith EU state aid rules now relaxed because of the oil crisis to allow for targeted price interventions, the Government has no excuse not to help struggling homes and businesses. As an immediate measure, the Social Democrats have proposed a targeted \u20ac400 energy credit that would be given to households with annual incomes of less than \u20ac70,000.”<\/p>\n
The credit would target those most in need, with Deputy Whitmore describing it as a ‘necessary support during these exceptional times.’<\/p>\n
The Wicklow TD also called for increased investment in renewable energy options such as solar and offshore wind. The party’s plan includes increased grant funding for the installation of roof-mounted solar panels, the reinstatement of the battery storage, and the introduction of free solar panels as part of the Warmer Homes Scheme, so families most at risk of energy poverty could get them installed<\/p>\n
This research from Eurostat follows an announcement from PrepayPower that, from next month, electricity prices will increase by 8.8% while gas prices will see a sharper rise at 10.6%. The increased rates will come into effect in June, and households can expect an average increase of \u20ac3.23 per week on electricity bills and \u20ac3.28 on gas bills.<\/p>\n
The company has an estimated 180,000 electricity customers and 60,000 gas customers. This marks PrepayPower’s first increase in the last 3.5 years and other providers are expected to announce their own price increases in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irish households are paying almost 40% more than the EU average 14:36, 06 May 2026Updated 14:42, 06 May…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-436269","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\/436269","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=436269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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