Eamon Ryan has defended a government decision to charge households more for their energy to reduce the cost to big businesses - without them knowing.
An Oireachtas committee heard on Tuesday how residential electricity customers had at least €50 million (combined) added to their electricity bills every year for 12 years to benefit the likes of tech and pharma firms as well as data centres.
Cabinet signed off on the ‘large energy user (LEU) rebalancing subvention’ which ran from 2010 to 2022, despite one of their own memos saying it would be “unpopular”.
