FINANCE MINISTER MICHAEL McGrath has said he expects Government will provide additional support for households to deal with energy bills.

However, he added it has not been decided what “mix” of measures could be implemented in the upcoming budget.

Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week programme, McGrath said: “We have a number of different levers at our disposal from tax and expenditure and different supports that we’ve used before and may use in the future.

“So we will decide what is the right mix, but we also want to see the market responding by passing on the wholesale reductions to consumers and come early October, we will then come to a final view about what is an appropriate Government response.”

He said energy bills are “unavoidable costs” facing households.

“That is why I do anticipate that the Government will be providing support to households to meet the energy bills in the months ahead.”

Asked if support would be provided to all households, the minister said that decision has not been made.

“But we have so far introduced four different electricity credits, which I think have proven to be effective and successful.

“We also, of course, had the reduction in VAT on gas and electricity.

“So that was a universal measure also, but we did complement that then with a whole range of targeted supports, expanding the eligibility to the fuel allowance scheme, making one-off payments to people who receive the fuel allowance, so there are different ways we can do it.”

Asked if it was time to call in the energy companies, McGrath said Environment Minister Eamon Ryan has “ongoing engagement” with the companies and has been discussing these issues with them.

“We do expect as a Government that consumers receive the benefit of what have been dramatic falls in wholesale energy prices,” he said.

“We have seen prices fall now to a level that essentially is before where we were when the [Ukraine] war started, and yet consumers have not benefited from that.”

He said the Government understands that it can take time and that companies have entered into different arranges, but that it doesn’t “fully explain the significant lag in passing on that benefit to consumers, and we want to see that happen”.

Figures published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) last month found that there has been a decrease of 16.2% in wholesale electricity prices in the month to May of this year.

The price of electricity was 26.6% lower in May 2023 when compared with May 2022.

However, despite the drop in prices, Daragh Cassidy from price comparison website Bonkers.ie explained that it may be some time before consumers see a reduction in their bills.

“The bad news is that wholesale electricity prices are still around three times what they were in 2020, before Covid-induced lockdowns and then the war in Ukraine wreaked havoc with energy prices,” he said.

He said while the trend of falling wholesale electricity prices is good, “we’ll probably need to see a few more months” of prices dropping “before we see a reduction in electricity bills for households”.

Additional reporting from Jane Moore