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A REDUCTION IN the Public Service Obligation (PSO) levy that appears on electricity bills of households and small businesses is to be announced this week.
The PSO levy is charged to all electricity customers in Ireland in a bid to support the generation of electricity from sustainable, renewable and indigenous sources.
The annual charge is currently €42.25.
It is expected that the a reduction in the PSO levy for both households and small commercial businesses will result in savings of around €23 per year for households and €90 per year for small businesses.
Government sources state that this is just one small item in a suite of measures being examined to bring the the cost of bills down for consumers.
“This Government is committed to tackling high energy costs through a wide range of measures while continuing to accelerate the decarbonisation of Ireland’s energy system,” they said.
The measure comes as it emerged yesterday that electricity bills will actually increase by at least €83 a year to pay for a major upgrade of the country’s power system.
ESB Networks has asked the energy regulator to approve a price increase that would enable it to fund investment of over €10 billion in next five years, investment that a conference heard yesterday is badly needed in order to meet the growing demands on the power grid.
The government has come under increasing pressure to assist homes and businesses with electricity and gas costs, with Irish people paying some of the most expensive bills in Europe.
A new group, tasked with driving down the cost for businesses, met yesterday for the first time.
The Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment Peter Burke established the new group with the aim of reducing the cost of running a business.
The forum brings together business owners, retailers, tourism operators, accounting professionals and representative groups—alongside regulators and state agencies—to look at the structural issues that are driving up costs and the steps that could be taken to mitigate them.
However, for every day households, little assistance is on the horizon this year, with government stating that there will be no across-the-board energy credits this year.
Energy Minister Darragh O’Brien told The Journal this week that Irish customers, in comparison to our EU colleagues, do pay more when it comes to energy.
“We’re probably the third most expensive when you average it out,” he said.
The minister said he had set up an affordability task force within his department that he will be chair next week. The group is looking at options on how to drive affordability, said O’Brien, but added that how electricity prices are struck is the main issue impacting Irish householders.
The cost of electricity for Irish customers is still linked at European level to the wholesale gas price, said the minister.
O’Brien said he has raised the matter with the European Commission on how to break that link, but said it is a “medium term” body of work that is needed before any changes will be seen.
“More EU states like Ireland are now producing more renewable energy, yet the energy cost itself is still linked to the wholesale gas prices. So that’s something that at an EU level, I can’t change that independently for Ireland, that’s something that we will be having discussions on at an EU level,” said the minister.
The minister said the matter will be raised again at the Energy Council in Luxembourg next week.
“There are other EU partners who would be in agreement with us that we need to reflect in our pricing the fact that we’ve more renewables year-on-year coming on stream, that we’re becoming less dependent on gas and on fossils. So why should the base price be stuck on the basis of the wholesale gas price. I think that’s a bigger discussion that we need to have,” the minister said.
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