Minister expects household energy prices to fall in coming weeks

Kenneth Fox

The Minister for Finance has said he expects household energy costs to fall over the coming weeks as he confirmed that energy credits will be introduced again this winter.

As the Irish Examiner reports, Michael McGrath said the Government developed a “good model” last year around the introduction of energy credits.

They were worth some €600 to households as part of a wider package of measures that were designed to ease the impact of the energy crisis on the public in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

However, with seven weeks to go before Budget 2024 is unveiled, energy companies have been criticised for not passing on to consumers the reductions they have seen in wholesale energy prices since the start of the year.

By May, wholesale energy prices had fallen by 26 per cent in the period May 2022 to May 2023, but prices to domestic consumers have not come down in line with those reductions.

Mr McGrath said at the time that there was “no adequate explanation” for the failure to pass on the savings to household customers.

Speaking in Cork at the weekend, he said he would like to see, and that he expects to see, domestic energy costs falling over the coming weeks.

“While I do expect retail energy costs will begin to fall and we need them to fall quickly, we need the pass-through [to consumers] to happen because we've seen dramatic reductions at the wholesale level,” he said.

“We need that to happen at retail level and I think in the coming weeks we will see some of the main retail energy providers reduce their rates.

"But the rates aren't going to come back down to the levels that we had for consumers before the war in Ukraine for a while yet.

“So I think it is undoubtedly the case that many households will require additional help and the budget is the time where we set out how we're going to do that.”

He confirmed that the budget will contain energy-cost supports, which are expected to be broadly similar to the energy credits which were applied to electricity bills last winter.