OIL PRICES TUMBLE - SO WHY NO DROP IN ELECTRICITY OR GAS BILLS?

The average wholesale price of oil and gas has fallen by 40 percent but electricity and gas consumers have hardly noticed any price fall.

‘We were told that privatisation would lead to cheaper prices but the current experience shows that this was a lie.

‘Most of the profitable parts of Bord Gais were sold off cheaply to Centrica, the owner of British gas. The state held on to the gas pipeline network and kept responsibility for its safety. But Centrica took over the supply of gas and electricity to 750,000 customers.

‘At the time it was suggested that privatisation would bring efficiency and lower prices. But despite the fact that wholesale prices have been dropping for three years, the private company is profiteering from the situation.

‘The ESB has been subject to pressure from the EU to make room for greater ‘market competition’ and it was claimed that this would bring lower prices. To facilitate this change, consumers are charged a special Public Services Obligation levy to help subsidise rival firms to enter the market.

‘Prior to the introduction of competition into the electricity market, Ireland had some of the lowest electricity prices in Europe for domestic users. Following the introduction of EU competition rules, the ESB’s prices were set 14 percent higher to encourage other firms to enter the market. Now despite falling oil prices, there has been no substantial cut in our electricity bills.

‘Data from the Central Statistics Office revealed that 15% of the population had difficulty affording heating at some stage — double the number in 2009. Tens of thousands of gas and electricity customers have been disconnected. Yet the private companies who control our energy needs do not care.

‘The reality is that privatisation does not bring lower prices or more efficiency. Instead it leads to profiteering and lower rates of long term investment.

‘Before the last election the Labour Party stated that it was opposed to ‘short-termist energy privatisation’. But the Labour Minister Pat Rabbitte then went and sold off Bord Gais to Centrica for a knock down price.

‘It was another promise broken – another lie told. We should never be fooled again.'

Apple, Enda Kenny, The Irish people want their taxes back !

Apple, Enda Kenny, The Irish people want their taxes back !

Apple boss Tim Cook flew into Brussels on Thursday to lobby the EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestage over a landmark judgement that could see the company forced to pay billions in back taxes to the Irish government. The fact that he can do that is discomforting in itself.

Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that the potential windfall for the Irish Revenue Commissioners could be €8 billion while JP Morgan suggests that Apple could have to pay €19 billion.

  

“You would think that the Irish government would be delighted with getting this huge amount of money. It would allow them to end the chaos in Irish hospitals because they could recruit more staff. They also could use the money to build the tens of thousands of social housing units that are desperately needed.

“But, tragically, Apple has enlisted the Irish government as one of its chief lobbyists in derailing an EU judgement. It has said that it does not want the money and that if the EU commissioner makes a ruling for back taxes they will appeal the decision.

“One immediate result of Irish government lobbying is that the announcement of the EU judgement has been postponed until after the General Election.  We are being forced to fight such an election on a ‘how much does your promise cost’ basis without knowing the full extent of back taxes.

“Irish taxpayers’ money should not be used to send officials to Brussels to lobby against the Irish people receiving taxes that have been dodged for over ten years.

“The Apple scandal shows where the culture of multi-national blackmail leads. We have been told repeatedly that we must give them a low tax regime because they ‘create jobs’. Every proposal to make them pay a modest tax has been dismissed as ‘wrecking the economy’.

"Now we have finally arrived at the greatest absurdity of all – a government that is spending money to ensure that its’ own people do not receive the huge sums they are owed”.

Their effective tax rate in Ireland falls way short of the 12.5% they are supposed to pay. (Some experts say it's only 2.5%)

This means that YOU have to pay USC, property tax etc. to make up the shortfall. This is a government that will never fight for YOU. They'd rather spend your money to save billions for multi-nationals.

Welcome to Ireland, a tax haven, tax-dodgers paradise. But, it's the greatest little country to rob the people in.

IRISH WATER FARCE

IRISH WATER WARS
- may the farce be with you -

The news that 3500 people in Roscommon are now on another boil water notice comes as no shock where Irish Water are involved. They are a glorified, tax collecting, shambles. Their sole purpose is to turn our water into a PRIVATE company. Fixing pipes and leaks will be last on their list. Just like the UK, it will be astronomical charges for far less quality.
On Saturday we can send a message to government.

IRISH WATER must be GONE.

Shannonside FM report ...
Roscommon County Council and Irish Water have confirmed this evening that the water supply served by Ballinlough Cloonfad public water scheme is contaminated with Cryptosporidium and residents should not use water straight from the tap in affected areas.

This alert, affecting three and a half thousand people, follows a precautionary boil water notice that was put in place in late December after the HSE moved to protect customers in the area in light of severe weather conditions.

Areas Affected include Ballinlough, Cloonfad, Trien, Cloonkeen, Cloonbunny, Briarfield, Tonragee, Garanlahan Lowberry and all townlands surrounding these.

Semi Private Group schemes served by the public water supply are also affected.

A few extracts from Jeremy Corbyn speaking today. The Tories and Fine Gael are as bad as each other. Fine Gael are trying to follow the Thatcher route. Run down services, privatise, sell off every available natural resource, sell out the people.

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"The absence of fairness and the wish for more of it is what drives us into political activity. We want a fair treatment for all, a fairer society and a fairer world. The passion to change things, to make things better, is what drives us all.
Their concept of fairness is of a very different order to ours. Fairness for only a few is not fairness, but privilege."

"Hidden among the fake concern for ‘balancing the books’, is the same hoary old Tory ideology – to shrink the state, to shrink fairness."

"Look at the floods – flood defence schemes up and down the country cut back because of a political ideology that says the state must be shrunk."

"Just because the Tories are running the state into the ground, don’t think it’s our public services that are the problem.

This is the same Tory strategy – they did it with the railways – underfund it, make cuts, run the service down, then offer up privatisation as the solution.
Cynical, dishonest and unfair.

It’s not just public services though they see only a limited role for the state because they want fairness limited too."

"We need to make EU decision-making more accountable to its people put jobs and growth at the heart of European policy strengthen workers’ rights in a real social Europe, and end the pressure to privatise services."

WHY IS LABOUR REWARDING UNION ALLIES WITH STATE JOBS?

People Before Profit has condemned Joan Burton’s decision to appoint the former ICTU General Secretary, David Begg, to the post of chairperson of the Pensions Committee.

The part time post carries a salary of €20,000 a year and ensures that Mr Begg will earn €100,000 over the five year period of his appointment.

‘This appointment is a disgraceful example of old style patronage. Since 2011, there is supposed to be a new system in place whereby positions on state boards must be advertised and the Public Appointment Service then assess candidates who apply against transparent procedures.

‘In the dying days of her administration, Joan Burton has invoked an exception clause to circumvent this procedure. She has behaved exactly the same as FF Ministers did in the past in rewarding their allies.

‘In the absence of a clear appointment procedure it is perfectly legitimate to question if David Begg is being rewarded for the role in played in getting the trade union movement to accept the pro-austerity social partnership agreements which were detrimental to workers.

‘Under his reign as ICTU General Secretary, the unions agreed to the loss of 35,000 public sector jobs and a cuts in pay that averaged 16% for public sector workers.

‘Mr Begg had previously served on the board of the Central Bank and did not openly speak out about the Central Bank’s failure to condemn the insane behaviour of Irish banks.

‘Workers will have little confidence that David Begg will represent their interests on the pension Board.

‘But the Labour Party will be happy that their outlook will be well represented.

YOUNG TEACHERS,

FORCED TO EMIGRATE BECAUSE IRELAND DISCRIMINATES AGAINST YOU ON PAY

Recruitment agencies from the United Arab Emirates are in Ireland to snap up Irish teachers. We will soon face a teacher shortage just as we already face a nurses shortage because our government has an official policy of age discrimination.

* In 2011, the salaries of new entrants were cut by 10%.
* Allowances on the basic salary were also cut.
* New entrants started of the first point of the salary scale unlike older staff who started on the second.

It is estimated that a teacher who started in 2012 would lose out on €250,000 of pay over a 40 year period compared to one who started in 2010.

On top of this legal discrimination, many more young teachers and nurses are employed on temporary contracts. Graduate teachers will spend an average of 8 years on such contracts before getting permanent employment.

And we wonder why young graduates are fleeing to the UAE, Australia or London.

I have today, strongly condemned Eir and the Government for the total exclusion of Boyle, Elphin, Roscommon Town, Tulsk and Williamstown from its current plans to provide Fibre to the Home (FTTH) Internet access speeds. 

Whilst these areas currently have or are in the process of getting upgraded to Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC), these areas are to be completely overlooked for the greater 1 Gb Internet speeds until at least sometime after 2020 under Eir’s current FTTH rollout plans.

FTTC, known as Fibre to the Cabinet or eFibre can deliver download speeds of up to 100 Mb             per second.

FTTH, known as Fibre to the Home can deliver speeds of up to 1000 Mb per second (1 Gb)

Many homes and businesses in these areas are already struggling with their existing broadband speeds, and knowing now that there are no plans to improve the speeds in these neglected areas for at least another 5 years raises multiple questions about this Government’s and Eir’s commitment to providing proper High Speed Internet across Ireland.

Eir’s planned rollout of FTTH for 2016 – 2020 to the country can be viewed here:

               http://fibrerollout.ie/where-and-when/ 

Floods: Our Do-Nothing Government

Flooding may lower LPT– Joan (Let them eat Cake) Burton, Leader of Labour

For those who have lost everything in the floods, fear not, Tánaiste Joan Burton has said that if people have been affected by severe flooding they may be able to look again at the valuation of their property, which could reduce the burden of the property tax.

Ms Burton said there are provisions to defer the tax, but said that firstly she would like to see the valuations being examined, particularly for people who do not have access to insurance. You may not have a roof over your head, you have no house insurance since the 2009 flooding, you may be struggling to cope with the unbelievable stress and worry the crisis has caused you, but at least good old Joan, a worthy ambassador for caring and compassion, will knock a few quid of your property tax.

There is no shortage of rain in Ireland as we face the grim prospect of three more weeks of wet weather. But the government that insists on water charges does very little about flooding. They should be declaring an extraordinary regional disaster to the EU and getting funds immediately to help those affected. http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/EN/funding/solidarity-fund/

Yes, of course, they repeat the scripts prepared by their script doctors. They are spending millions on flood defences; grants are available to those in distress; there is nothing that can be done about the weather.

In reality, they are worse than useless.

They cut capital spending for the Office of Public Works Flood Risk Management programme in the 2016 budget by €15.6 million. That represented a 25 percent reduction.

They have allowed flood defence systems to be delayed for up to two years.

In 2007, an EU directive required member states to carry out flood assessments to identify areas of significant risk by 2011. They then had to prepare flood hazard and risk maps for the areas identified. By the end of 2015, there was supposed to be flood risk management plans in place.

This overall programme was known as Catchment Flood Risk Assessment and Management (CFRAM).

However, a report in the Irish Independent revealed that almost 20 major flood defence schemes are running behind schedule. The article stated that

‘Progress reports from the Office of Public Works (OPW) reveal that schemes across seven counties are overdue, because of delays in completing detailed designs or a failure to appoint consultants to oversee the projects.’

The government has also done very little to stop the insurance industry rejecting cover for those in affected areas.

Instead the OPW and the Insurance Industry have agreed to exchange data on flooding. This has only meant that the insurance industry uses the information to push up prices for affected areas to sums which are impossible to pay.

In other countries it is illegal for insurance companies to cherry pick who they will cover and not cover.

Yet even where flood defences have been put in place, the Irish Insurance industry is allowed to get away with refusals to cover.

This scandalous situation could be averted if the Minister for Finance used his power to refuse to licence insurance companies that were engaged in this activity. But in neoliberal Ireland there is supposed to be no interference in business – so nothing is done.

The floodings are a grim warning about the effects of global warming. Weather patterns are changing because the capitalist system we live under is addicted to fossils fuels and this is leading to a rise in global temperatures.

The Irish government is full of platitudes when it comes to reducing carbon emissions but their actions tells a different story.

They have cut back dramatically on public transport and have made Ireland one of the most car dependent societies in the world.

The flooding crisis shows why we need a real left wing government that takes real action. Such a government would:

(i)              Establish a state run insurance industry which provided automatic cover to households. It would withdraw the licences from private firms that refused cover.

(ii)            Mobilise a directly employed OPW workforce to build flood defences immediately.

(iii)          Organise the evacuation of isolated households at risk of constant flooding.

(iv)         Investigate how corrupt planners allowed housing developments to occur on flood plains.

(v)            Take real action to stop climate change by moving away from the market and developing an economic system based on proper planning.

NURSES VOTE TO KEEP UP CAMPAIGN AGAINST OVERCROWDING

Nurses have voted to keep up their campaign against overcrowding in A&E departments despite offers to give them an educational bursary of €1,500, extra days off and more promotional opportunities.

It shows that they will not be bribed by HSE management and will continue with their campaign to highlight the crisis in our hospitals.

‘Last November HSE set a target that there would be no more than 50 patients waiting on trolleys throughout the country. Yet last night over 500 people were waiting on trolleys – that is, more than ten times the official target.

‘The greatest pressure on A&E departments normally comes in January and February. Yet very little has been done to prepare for the crisis.

‘The root of the problem lies in the policies adopted by the FG-Labour government and their predecessors. In order to pay off bondholder debt, they embarked on a policy of running down the public services by abolishing over 30,000 jobs and attacking the pay and conditions of the workforce.

’10,000 of those jobs were lost in the health services and hospital wards were closed.

‘In 2001, the government’s health strategy suggested that Ireland needed an extra 3,000 hospital beds to reach an overall target of 15,000 beds. Yet since 2008, the INMO estimates that 1,700 beds were lost, leaving us with just 10,000 beds.

'In addition to all of this young nurses have been treated so disgracefully that many leave the country once they graduate. Student nurses are required to undertake 36 weeks clinical placement in their final year. But they are paid below the minimum wage and this period is not counted for incremental pay. All of these factors have meant that whole classes of undergraduate nurses, are now leaving to work abroad – leaving behind a massive recruitment crisis in Ireland.

‘The union leaders who went along with social partnership agreements which claimed that workers could give ‘more for less’ have a lot to answer for.'

I am 100% behind the nurses in their action.

FINE GAEL LIED ABOUT ENDING HOSPITAL TROLLEY CRISIS

On Monday there were 510 patients stuck on hospital trolleys. Yet nearly five years ago, Fine Gael won an election by promising to end the scandal of the trolley crisis. Health Minister Leo Varadkar has also presided over the cancellation of a record number of 13,000 scheduled operations. The cause of this crisis is that they have closed hospital wards, got rid of 5,000 nurses and cut their pay. People Before Profit favours investment in a high quality public service that is funded by progressive taxation. We don't need to pay three times - though health insurance, taxes and hospital charges- to end up on a HSE trolley.

(NOTE: DETAILS ON YOUR LOCAL HOSPITAL TROLLEY COUNT BY BE FOUND BY CHECKING TROLLEY WATCH on https://www.inmo.ie/6022)

FINES ON WAY FOR REFUSING NEW ELECTRICITY METERS

We are to be fined if we refuse to accept new smart electricity meters, according to new rules from the Commission on Energy Regulation. These meters will charge more for electricity usage during peak hours and less for off peak hours. The cost of installation will be €750 million and that will be loaded onto ESB consumers in a 'distribution charge' over the next five years. That is on top of a charge of €64 'Public Service Obligation Levy' a year which is used to subsidise private companies. And, yes, contracts are to be awarded for the new metering programme. Denis must be getting ready again.