Given that the issue of the ESB's 3.9% pay increment is now centre stage with the media, I think it is also worth pointing out that ESB employees get a significant discount on their energy bills through a free unit allowance.
This gratuity is being funded by hard-pressed Irish businesses and households, and is enjoyed by some of the highest paid State employees in the country.
This company seems to have no bottom line when it comes to screwing consumers and taxpayers.
A demagogue is someone who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
How is it screwing consumers and taxpayers anymore than other service providers who screw their customers and give their staff big discounts?Originally Posted by goosebump
Didn’t it give back something like €400 million to the exchequer?
Greedy b*stards eh!
Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.
George Will
It's a disgrace in a public-sector company wghere the average salary is €100,000 for the company to provide a 3% pay increase when the public-finances are collapsing. It must be reversed, or added to the pension-contributions of the relevant employees. This is where an electricity monopoly gets you, with the taxpayer over a barrel. The ESB group of unions are an aristocracy, defending its privileges like their French counterparts in the economic crisis prior to 1789. I wonder how Labour feel being institutionally-tied to an aristocracy?
Last edited by FutureTaoiseach; 4th February 2009 at 03:09 PM.
2 wrongs don't make a right. No semi-state utility company should be giving staff discounts.
What's that got to do with anything? Where else would the profits of a semi-state go?
ESB profits are effectively a tax, that ESB employees get a discount on.
A demagogue is someone who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
Blame the regulator, he sets prices.
Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.
George Will
The Regulator does not set prices. They approve prices. If the ESB applied for a 15% price reduction in the morning, they would get it.
A demagogue is someone who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
True and false, the regulator is supposed to ensure that the ESB does not set prices too low.
Also since the ESB is commercial semi-state it is bound by all the same rules regarding it’s responsibility to it shareholders as those in the private sector is it not
But I suppose it escaped you that the ESB is currently looking for a price reduction?
Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.
George Will
True, but in light of a 250% drop in energy prices, a price reduction of 15% would not be an abuse of a monopoly position.
The purpose of a semi-state body corporate is to supply an essential service, not maximise shareholder value as is the case if a Public Limited Company.
Since when?
It announced about 4 weeks ago that current prices would remain until Oct 2009.
A demagogue is someone who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
The model of regulation has strangled rather than facilitated competition. It almost seems designed to discredit the idea of more competition, as a pretext to maintaining ESB as a FF-fiefdom. If the govt were serious about more competition, they would separate Eirgrid from the ESB, as well as forcing the ESB to sell powerstations to the private-sector. A big-bang approach to competition is a better alternative than the tortuous process happening now where prices are kept artificially high in part by the regulator.
How much of an allowance?
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