Businesses facing increases of 4 and 5 times their normal energy bills

- Significant measures needed from Government to support businesses -

The Government needs to introduce significant measures to support businesses who are struggling with unprecedented energy costs, says Cork Chamber.
 
“Our members are advising us of unprecedented energy costs of which many are struggling to absorb. In our budget submission we outlined that inflation and competitiveness was a growing concern for our members and as we now reach the back end of the third quarter of this fiscal year, this issue has become even more acute. It’s important that the Government steps in with significant measures to ensure energy costs can be kept at a reasonable level, particularly to protect our SME sector,” said Cork Chamber President, Ronan Murray.
 
“There are real parallels with the onset of the Covid pandemic where the Government moved the dial to safeguard the health of our citizens while in parallel provided a range of Government supports to protect the business community. This too requires an equally robust response from Government given the increasing scale of the issue”.
 
“There is a growing recognition in government of the need to act to not just support households but also businesses. Therefore it’s imperative a number of significant measures are introduced to support companies.”
 
Cork Chamber CEO, Conor Healy said: “Our members tell us they are facing increases of four and five times in their normal energy bills which is just unprecedented and not something that they can just absorb and keep going. The Government has to step in and make sure that energy costs can be kept at a level so that businesses can keep running this winter."
 
“We also need to see supports for large employers who are in energy intensive industries. Germany has introduced €1.7 billion of tax breaks for 9,000 of its energy intensive businesses as well as a range of other measures to reduce the impact of energy price inflation."
 
“This energy crisis has highlighted the need for Ireland to focus directly on energy security. The world has changed and our position on energy security needs to change to respond to that changed world. That includes increased storage and diversifying the sources of supply of fuels for our heating and power stations, including sources of gas,” said Healy.