IRISH CUSTOMERS ARE paying the among the highest price for electricity and gas in the EU, according to new research.
The information comes from the EU’s statistical research agency Eurostat and compares the cost of both gas and electricity per kilowatt-hour.
The research found that Ireland is in the top five for the cost of both utilities.
In the case of gas, Irish customers pay just under 10 cent per kilowatt-hour, only Swedish customers pay more.
Electricity prices in Ireland work out at an average of 20 cent per kilowatt-hour, the fourth highest in the EU behind only Belgium, Denmark and Portugal.
The cheapest counties for gas were Romania and Bulgaria and for electricity were Bulgaria and Lithuania.
Figures were not available for a small number of countries including Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Germany.
Daragh Cassidy of price comparison website Bonkers.ie said in response to the figures that Irish prices are out-of-line with those in the rest of the EU.
“Things like wages and business overheads also get factored into the price of supplying energy and these costs are also far higher in Ireland than in many other European countries.”
However, we do need firm answers from the Commission for Regulation of Utilities and Government as to why exactly we pay so much more and why the deregulation of the energy market appears to have had little effect on households’ energy bills.
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