Ireland the most expensive country in the EU for electricity

Michael Bolton

Electricity price rises last year mean Ireland again has the highest household charges in the EU.

The average household in Ireland is paying around €480 a year more for its electricity compared to the EU average, according to a report from Eurostat.

At 40.42 cent per kilowatt-hour (including VAT and levies) prices here are almost 40 per cent above the EU average of 28.96 cent.

Germany, struggling with higher energy prices since it decided to phase out its use of nuclear energy, has the second-highest electricity prices in the EU (38.69 cent) followed by Belgium (34.99 cent).

Electricity prices are lowest in Hungary (10.82 cent), Malta (12.82 cent) and Bulgaria (13.55 cent).

The same report shows that gas prices are the eighth highest in the EU at just over eight per cent below the EU average.

Commenting on the report, Daragh Cassidy of Bonkers.ie said: ""The reasons we pay so much more are complex."

"We’ve a relatively small and dispersed population with a lot of one-off housing, so the costs for the upkeep of our electricity network are very high on a per capita basis.

"The rapid growth of the population and the increase in the number of data centres operating here in recent years also hasn't helped.

"This is putting pressure on the grid. And in recent years, we’ve had to procure high-cost, emergency gas generation to plug the gap between electricity demand and supply.

"We also still rely on gas to generate over 40 per cent of our electricity, the price of which is close to three times what it was before the war in Ukraine. Countries with cheaper electricity generally rely more on hydro and nuclear.

"Many of our power plants are also older and smaller than those in other countries, so we don’t benefit from efficiencies and economies of scale as much.

"And we have a weakly connected grid. We’re quite isolated, so we can't import a huge amount of cheaper electricity from abroad.

We have only two interconnectors with the UK at present. Although the new interconnector we’re building with France will hopefully improve things when it comes online in 2028, as it will allow us to tap into cheaper French electricity.