Green Party measures help reduce energy prices

Green Party policies to reduce Ireland’s dependence on gas and increase use of renewable energy has helped to cut energy prices yet again. In September, Minister Eamon Ryan met with the main energy companies of Ireland to express concern that energy prices were too high and action was needed.

Today, the result of his efforts can be seen as SSE Airtricity cut its electricity prices by another 12.8% and its gas prices by 11.5% for its 300,000 customers. This cut will lower the annual bill of a typical electricity customer by €219.29 and of a typical gas customer by €157.07 and will take effect from February 1st.

The Government has taken a range of measures to reduce energy costs and the cost of living for consumers, such as the energy credits of €450 to all households. The first payment of €150 issues this month.

The reduction comes as Wind Energy Ireland reported that 37% of Ireland’s electricity in November came from wind energy alone.

Senator Roisin Garvey, Green Party Spokesperson for Rural Development, welcomed the price cut;

“It is great to see progress has been made in support of small businesses in the reduction of their bills. We saw Minister Eamon Ryan meeting with the big companies earlier in the summer and subsequent to that, we had a reduction in September and now we see a further commitment to reduction in February. I can envision the other companies all following suit and hopefully some of them might even bring their reductions even sooner to try and get ahead of Airtricity that announced it today.”