Goodness what a bunch of clever clogs they are there in the government ‘communications’ department. Clearly the lads have been sat down by the press secretary and the other big-wigs of government to get the line out over energy price increase since the latest middle-east war. And that line is, as always, it is everyone else’s fault but the governments! Price Gouging! It’s all price gouging this and price gouging that, one cannot step outside of the house before some forecourt somewhere is ‘needlessly’ putting up their prices.
Give me a break. John explained yesterday the basic economics of supply and demand when it comes to energy. Also there are the punishment taxes. ‘It is illegal for anybody in Ireland to sell you a litre of diesel for any price lower than €0.76. That seventy-six cents is the excise duty and carbon tax on the diesel (sixty one cents) plus the VAT at 23% on top of it. Even if the diesel itself was entirely free, and nobody from the oil company to the importer to the distributor or the retailer was charging a cent, that is what you have to pay the Government on a litre of diesel when you buy it.”
I explained the day before why the government is intentionally plunging Irish families into fuel poverty. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: they want you to experience pain when consuming energy so you will consume less. That is their stated aim.
It is no coincidence reader, no coincidence at all that the Ministers are out there with the phrase ‘price gouging.’ This in the parlance of politics done to maximise ‘cut through.’ The public are simple Simons and as they are only ever half listening to the radio and tv just keep saying price gouging and they will blame the lads at the forecourts for the increase in energy. What the government does not want you to do is blame them.
So it is no accident that on Newstalk Breakfast, former Energy Minister Eamon Ryan said there is “no need for prices to rise this early into the conflict.” Oh really? Is there not? He’s out there getting the stuff out of the ground while the bombs fall? Doesn’t that man have a bike to cycle to somewhere?
(The spin doctors lose control In the Thick of It.)
Also no accident is when Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said there is “no excuse for prices going up at the pump” and urged companies not to take advantage of their customers. The government of course spends most of its time taking advantage of the voters but this is rarely put to them by the national broadcaster.
Enterprise Minister Peter Burke on the Claire Byrne show “is encouraging any consumers that have seen dramatic increases in the cost of fuel to report it to ask@ccpc.ie.” Where can I report the government for price gouging in the form of a carbon tax?
So the line has been settled upon and the Ministers are doing the rounds. It’s all the fault of ‘price gouging.’ Please understand that this is an outright manipulation of the facts.
As I said before, there are a lot of things the Irish government has zero influence over, and conflict in the middle-east is surely one. What they do have control over is tax, excise duty, VAT, income tax and the carbon tax.
In recent years the Irish government has steadily increased the carbon tax on all of us. It rose again in Budget 2026, increasing by €7.50 to €71 per tonne of CO2 emitted. The plan is to raise it to €100 per tonne by 2030. One hundred Euros per tonne. That’s ginormous price gouging right there.
This is a political choice. Trump isn’t making them do this. Netanyahu isn’t making them do this. The far-right fascists aren’t making them do this. Not even the Baby Jesus is making them do it. They are choosing to do so, ‘so we will reach the carbon targets.’
The Government said the additional revenue arising from the carbon tax increase is estimated at €121m in 2026, and the full-year additional yield is estimated at €157m. That’s a lot of money that goes into what we are told is a “just transition.” That budget was announced by the Great Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe before he went to the World Bank (salary: E410,00.) All the mainstream journalists were dying their eyes over the loss of Donohoe.
That’s the same Paschal Donohoe who gave the World Bank an extra €10 million of taxpayers money that the World Bank did not ask for just a few months before he went to work there. “Documents obtained by Extra.ie show Donohoe opted to provide the World Bank with €141.4 million on 24 April 2025, even as officials in his department recommended giving significantly less. The World Bank itself recommended that Ireland give €131.4 million.” Interesting. An extra E10 billion just found down the back of the sofa and given away by the Minister.
The government also had bumper corporation tax revenue which rose to E33 billion. The figure is up by 17.2% compared to 2024. And yet they cannot even ‘pause’ the carbon tax increase in light of the latest war in the middle-east. The headlines should be not about price-gouging, but Government refuses to help Irish voters not die of the cold.
A few other matters. It might seem obvious but it is easy to forget. Remember Eamon Ryan, Peter Burke nor the Taoiseach and certainly not the two airheads McEntee and Harris do nothing, absolutely nothing, to get the diesel in your car or heat in your home. They are not the oil engineers out there in the middle of the North sea getting the energy, they don’t build any pipes, they don’t transport any fuel unlike the haulage man (that’s a technical term) and they don’t get it into the forecourts and they certainly don’t do that old-fashioned thing where they come out of the shop and ask you if you want ‘her filled up.’ No, Sir. That’s for the little people.
No, what these politicians do is pontificate and levy taxes. So not only are you charged VAT on pretty much everything – goods, services and fuel, excise duty, stamp duty should you want to buy a home to heat, capital gains tax if you had the temerity to make a profit on something, the universal social charge, a tax I believe on savings, and all paid for from income that was surprise – taxed. The income tax which is the second highest on the middle-class in the OECD. And the final tax comes upon the sweet release of death in the form of an inheritance tax.
What do they actually do with it? We don’t have a national health service unlike Britain, a gargantuan department that swallows up billions. Nor do we have any real defence obligations as we are neutral. We don’t have to find the cash for the warship HMS Barney the Dinosaur or HMS Dennis the Menace or whatever they are arguing about over there in the Ministry of Defence in London. Nope, we don’t have to worry about that as, truth be known, we are doing a little freeloading. The education system is good, I’ll accept that but we don’t have nearly enough social housing for instance.
So the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste and the rest of the lads can yap on about price gouging all they want. But just remember, there are no bigger price gougers than the politicians.