Many working families will face very difficult choices this coming winter regarding putting food on the table or heating their homes. The unit rates for electricity, as well as the standing charges, will each increase by 9.5%. While the price of food continues to increase, between June 2024 and June 2025 food and non-alcoholic beverages rose by 4.6%.
Bord Gáis Energy (a Centrica-owned company) announced a whopping 13.5% increase. They made profits of €39 million for the first half of 2025 and €75 million for 2024. The ESB made €424 million for the six months to the end of June 2025. SSE Airtricity announced electricity bills will rise by 10.5% and gas bills will rise by 8.4%, adding on average over €170 to electricity bills and €113 to gas bills this year.
The Central Statistics Office report earlier this year showed that wholesale electricity prices rose by 22.3% in January compared to the previous month and were 67.7% higher than in January 2024.
Low-paid workers, workers unable to join a trade union to fight for higher wages, and families dependent on social welfare are feeling the cost of living under capitalism the hardest.
The Republic has among the most expensive bills for household electricity in the EU, and if Irish electricity prices fell to the EU average, it would save the average household a third of their annual bills, worth about €500.
Ireland currently has two main sources of gas supply – Corrib and imports from the UK via two gas interconnector pipelines. Corrib supplies around 60% of Ireland’s annual demand, with 35% imported from Britain. All of Ireland’s oil and gas fields were handed over to foreign multi-nationals at bargain-basement prices many decades ago.
The Corrib gas field of Mayo is owned by Vermilion, who hold a 56.5% interest in Corrib, with CPPIB (Canada Pension Plan Investment Board) holding a 43.5% non-operated interest. This brings little or no benefit to the Irish people, as we pay global market prices for our own oil and gas.
In 2023, the Republic imported $1.91 billion of crude petroleum, becoming the 46th largest importer of crude petroleum in the world.
Our over-reliance on global energy corporations, thereby being held to ransom for ever-increasing profits, will be further exacerbated if the application by Shannon LNG, a subsidiary of American New Fortress Energy, for an energy park on the 630-acre site on the Shannon estuary between Tarbert and Ballylongford gets the go-ahead. They will be importing very expensive fracked gas from the US, further strengthening a subservient role to US monopolies.
The proxy war between NATO and Russia fought out in Ukraine has been used as an excuse to jack up energy prices and a source of vast profits for energy companies. The EU continues to sacrifice working people across Europe for its war goals in Ukraine, making itself even more of a vassal state to the US.
At the end of September, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced new sanctions on Russia, the 19th round of ineffective sanctions, once again focused on Russian energy. The EU is making working people pay a heavy price in both higher energy costs, as well as the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs due to high energy costs, making manufacturers across the EU increasingly uncompetitive and resulting in an intensification in the exploitation of workers.
This latest package of sanctions includes a complete ban on imports of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) from January 2027, and extends sanctions to refineries and oil traders in third countries, such as China and India, whom the EU/US accuse of helping Russia circumvent sanctions. All previous sanctions have been shown to have had little impact on Russia. The EU importation of expensive LNG has since 2022 risen from 20% to 50%, of which half comes from the US.
This reflects more the powerlessness of the EU itself and makes it even more dependent upon expensive imported US energy. The Trump regime is now proposing a plan that could see the US account for nearly three-quarters of Europe’s LNG imports. ExxonMobil expects Europe to sign multi-decade contracts for US gas as part of its pledge to buy $750 billion of American energy. The EU sanctions strategy has backfired and is now hurting the EU more than Russia, all to support the EU war strategy in relation to Ukraine.
Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia was the EU’s largest supplier of oil and natural gas. Since then, Russia’s share of EU oil imports has dropped from 29% to 2%, and that of gas from 48% to 12%. Currently, there are two pipelines from Russia to EU member states: the Druzhba pipeline, which still delivers oil to Hungary and Slovakia, and the TurkStream pipeline, which supplies gas to Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, and Romania.
The madness of the EU strategy is shown by the fact that in the first six months of 2025, the EU/Turkey imported 2.4 million tons of oil products from India. Both Turkey and India buy cheap Russian oil and gas and resell it on to the EU at a very significant mark-up. So, we are paying higher energy prices because of the EU military and energy strategies.
The EU is trying desperately to force Russia to end the war on western imperial terms. They are not interested in a negotiated settlement but rather the surrender of Russia. The consequences for workers of Europe and for Irish workers have been horrendous. It has resulted in industrial stagnation. Germany, once the powerhouse of the EU, is now suffering deindustrialisation, with 125,000 industrial jobs lost in September alone.
So, when you are unable to turn on the heating or have to cut back on food, blame corporate greed and the EU sanctions strategy. Blame a subservient and dependent Irish capitalist class who have no strategy to protect Irish workers, nor a strategy to secure energy security for our country. The economic, military, and political strategies of the EU are and will leave many families hungry and cold this winter.
