Electric Ireland has announced that it is increasing residential electricity prices by 9 per cent and residential gas prices by 7.8 per cent with effect from 01 August. This is due to increases in wholesale energy costs.

Marguerite Sayers, Executive Director, Electric Ireland commented: "Electric Ireland is determined to keep prices as low as possible, but we are exposed to the price changes in the wholesale market – the price at which we buy electricity. In March, many suppliers increased prices, but we implemented a price freeze to ensure our customers were protected from the impact of rising costs for as long as possible. We also extended our disconnection moratorium to help customers struggling during the pandemic and are keeping it in place for another two months until the end of August. We had hoped that prices might stabilise but unfortunately, wholesale energy costs have continued to increase and are significantly higher than this time last year. As a result, we must reluctantly pass on some of these costs to our customers from August 1st. We appreciate this may be a difficult time for some customers and are committed to helping customers who are experiencing financial difficulty. We encourage any customers experiencing trouble paying bills to engage with us and we will commit to putting in place an affordable and workable payment plan with them in the coming months."

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She added: "Electric Ireland has one of the lowest standard unit rates in the market for electricity and gas. We automatically apply this for all our customers. We are the only Irish supplier to offer an enduring discount rate of up to 8.5 per cent for gas and electricity which does not disappear after a year. We also provide several flexible payment options to help customers, including an Equaliser product which enables customers to spread their energy costs across the year or take a payment holiday by agreeing a plan to pay their bills over eleven months instead of twelve."