The Electricity Supply Board may consider raising the price of domestic electricity to help reduce energy costs in the industrial sector, chief executive Padraig McManus has said.
Speaking at the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, Mr McManus acknowledged that industrial electricity prices in Ireland were well above the European Union average.
He said price changes were unlikely to happen this year but a move to reduce energy cost for businesses would have to be considered over the extended term.
Fine Gael’s energy spokesman Simon Coveney said the cost of doing business in Ireland is too high and this was forcing many businesses out of business.
This was having “dire consequences” for the hundreds of people who are losing employment every day, he said.
Mr Coveney said: “The truth is that, in the Irish energy market, consumers and businesses continue to pay the price for facilitating new entrants into a competitive market place, yet we are seeing no direct benefits of competition in terms of lower energy costs.
It's about time we made competition work by measuring its success, not by the number of new players in the market, but by how the energy market is delivering to consumers and energy users.”
He called on Commission for Energy Regulation (CER), Government and Semi-State companies such as the ESB and Bord Gais, to make reducing the cost of energy in Ireland a priority measure above all else for the next two years.
In his address, Mr Coveney claimed the Government's response to the economic crisis had been dominated by “narrowly focused solutions” to the two problems of banking the budgetary deficit.
“Bank recapitalisation, cutbacks in expenditure and increased taxation seem to be the only big policy discussions on the table.
These measures are necessary, if painful, but cannot be the limit of the State's response. As well as cutting back we must also find ways to stimulate new economic activity and improve conditions for existing businesses to allow them to survive,” he added.
