GROCER’S €14K POWER COSTS
Some of their members have already indicated that costs have increased by around 15 per cent since 2018 to keep up.
Lisa Eccles, vice president of the IHF, said that energy costs, the cost of hair dye, and the cost of foil has increased — with the latter rising by 25 per cent.
New employment changes such as sick pay and an increase in the minimum wage has also added pressure, she said, meaning “salons are just expected to find the money from thin air”.
A GROCER hit with electricity ■
bills totalling €35,000 last year has been stunned with another €14,000 demand.
Gala shop owner Flora Crowe of Sixmilebridge, Clare told The Star that State support for small businesses must continue.
Her two-month electricity
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bills last year averaged around €6,500, but jumped to €15,782.23 in September, then €20,803.41 in November, and now over €14,000.
Flora (34) said the charges are the “biggest electricity bills I have ever seen in my life”.
The Temporary Business Energy ■
Support Scheme (TBESS) has covered as much as 40 per cent of the increase in energy bills, up to €10,000 per month until February.
But Flora yesterday urged businesses to come together and said: “I got €5,500 back from the energy scheme to date. However, there is a very low uptake on the scheme.
“We had until [yesterday] to
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claim for September. I think the Dept of Enterprise is unlikely to extend it beyond February.”
But Revenue has announced that TBESS claims for last September can be made after the deadline.
A spokesperson said: “Revenue ■
is allowing businesses additional time to submit their claims.”
Finance Minister Michael McGrath declined in recent days to confirm which cost-of-living supports like TBESS could be extended.
THE ESB has vowed to give every household in the country a €50 refund after overcharging customers a total of some €500bn on their electricity bills for 12 years.
It comes as the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) watchdog told an Oireachtas committee yesterday that a subsidy scheme introduced to help large businesses over a decade ago ended and domestic customers will be reimbursed.
In a statement, ESB Networks said the company identified the issue and has been engaging with the CRU.
It said: “While the process and mechanism of the rebalancing is still to be determined with the CRU, ESB Networks anticipates it will result in the reduction of a domestic electricity bill of €50.”
CRU Chairperson Aoife MacEvilly told the Oireachtas committee that “in March of last year we decided, absolutely, that money will be paid back to domestic customers.”
It comes after a scheme intended to subsidise large energy users to the tune of €50m annually was instead billed to domestic customers, and ran from 2010 to 2022.
It emerged that ESB Networks overcharged domestic customers in the way it implemented the scheme, using a percentage rather than a fixed amount.
Subsidy
“Domestic bills were being charged more than we had directed,” Ms MacEvilly told the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action.
Sinn Fein senator Lynn Boylan slammed the CRU’s lack of oversight of the subsidy following the Oireachtas committee hearing.
She said: “it appears they failed to carry out any distributional impact of this measure, and how it would have affected people struggling to pay bills. “The households that paid at least half a billion euro want answers.”