I normally work on the basis of not believing anything government related until it has been officially denied by RTE or the BBC.
Having said that, in a rare act of explaining something in simple English, RTE has a very good article explaining why electricity costs in Ireland are the highest in Europe.
TLDR, electricity is more expensive in Ireland due to:
- Higher costs generally, which then feed into supplies/staff costs/taxes etc borne by electricity providers
- Higher wages/salaries in Ireland relative to other countries
- The size of Ireland’s grid.
I was pleasantly surprised to see this last one mentioned as normally, anything that implies that the proliferation of one off housing in rural Ireland comes with a price tag is deemed to be the elephant in the corner of the room and is not talked about or, worse still, its existence is denied.