Who would object to windfall taxes being imposed on the hundreds of millions of euro profits being raked in by energy companies at the expense of Irish consumers?
Apparently the Government, including the Green party, as they fear such a move would send out the message that Ireland is anything other than Europe’s leading neoliberal poster boy.
Still, wouldn’t it be great if the public, like the banks and big builders during the crash, got a bailout.
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Unfortunately there’s not a chance even after UN chief Antonio Guterres’s call yesterday for a tax on the massive profits made by oil and gas companies.
To do so would be to slap the hidden hand that supposedly controls the free market when the reality for consumers is they are being ripped off by corporations that are virtual monopolies and cartels.
In May, Leo Varadkar confirmed that energy corporations were making enormous profits and claimed the Government was considering imposing windfall taxes.
Since then there has been silence even though energy prices have skyrocketed proving that the Government is unwilling to call on their corporate overlords to share the burden being carried by ordinary people.
Apparently they can’t mess with the market but when the shoe was on the other foot there was nothing to stop Fine Gael raiding private pension funds after the builders and bankers crashed the economy.
That heist was supposed to be an emergency measure but the robbing went on for five years with a total of €2.39 billion being pilfered from workers’ hard-earned savings to keep afloat private enterprises in the hospitality sector.
In return for our enforced generosity this same sector is now fleecing tourists and staycationers with what are among the highest hotel room rates in Europe. That’s how Ireland works.
While the current government refuses to impose new taxes on the obscene profits of the energy companies it should also be remembered that Fine Gael had no qualms about raiding the State’s Pension Reserve Fund to the tune of €17billion to bail out their banker friends.
It’s all one way traffic when it comes to the transfer of wealth as it is families who are struggling to meet their utility bills who are generating the massive profits of the energy corporations.
It is at the expense of workers who are paying exorbitant prices for fuel so they can earn a living that the coffers of the energy companies are overflowing.
The idea that investors in a carbon intensive industry are awash with cash during an energy and climate crisis is morally wrong but the Government or the Green party obviously don’t see it that way.
Much easier to make it as expensive as possible for a widow to buy a bag of coal or make it more difficult to drive to work by imposing higher carbon taxes on diesel and petrol.
One of the excuses being put forward for not imposing a windfall tax is that the companies involved are based outside the State.
“The difficulty we have in Ireland is that the vast majority of energy companies are not Irish”, the Tanaiste told the Dail in May.
Which is not entirely correct unless the ESB has emigrated and this statement also calls into question why once State-owned energy assets were sold off to the private sector.
This was supposedly done to increase competition but what the country ended up with is a plethora of glorified cartels trying to outprice each other.
On the other hand Italy has managed to hit energy companies with a 25% tax while many other EU states including France, Spain and Portugal have imposed price caps but the Irish Government is still reluctant to interfere in the market.
Yesterday Colette Bennett of Social Justice Ireland said the charity supports a windfall tax on energy company profits and at the same time called on the Government to impose caps on the cost of energy.
She said the Government needs to take a leadership position instead of leaving it to the market and instead make decisions that will help those who are finding it increasingly difficult to pay fuel bills.
Unfortunately the current Government, especially Fine Gael, is ideologically opposed to such a move in much the same way as it has refused to deal with the worsening housing and homelessness crisis.
Better to throw more crumbs to the public in September’s Budget in the form of another electricity credit which will have to be paid back as the cash comes from the State’s coffers.
Anything to avoid a tax on the corporations for the invisible hand of the market must never be restrained….even if it is choking the life out of Irish society.
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