Madam, – The Government is correctly referred to as the shareholder of ESB. It should be remembered, however, that it is the customers of ESB who paid for all its assets down the years, since it was established in 1927. The Government has no equity in the company, and never had. Its mandate from the beginning was to provide an electricity service at lowest possible cost to support economic development of the country – it was to make neither a profit or a loss, year on year. It discharged that mandate competently.
More recently, in order to encourage competition, (unbelievably!) it was required to increase its prices as new entrants would not come into the market at the relatively low prices achieved by ESB. Thus we now have a situation where new entrants can make good profits and ESB can pay a significant dividend to Government.
And Government ministers complain, as do economists who supported the notion of increasing prices in order to encourage competition, that Ireland is uncompetitive internationally and something should be done to reduce utility prices.
What a strange country, what a strange people. – Yours, etc,