Households face increases in their energy bills from Friday May 1st as the hike in the carbon tax kicks in.
The tax was raised by €6 to €26 per tonne of carbon dioxide in last year’s budget.
However, the increase was postponed until today on home heating fuels such as coal, peat, natural gas and home heating oil.
The comparison website, bonkers.ie, calculates that the increase will add around €60 to the average household’s natural gas bill.
It will add €2.73 to a 40kg bag of coal, 59 cent to a bale of briquettes and €65 to every fill of a 900-litre home heating oil tank.
“With all that’s going on right now due to Covid-19 and with hundreds of thousands of people having been laid off, this government tax increase couldn’t have come at a worse time,” Daragh Cassidy, Head of Communications at bonkers.ie said.
“And although energy suppliers have announced reductions in the price of gas recently on the back of falling wholesale prices, this increase in the carbon tax will reverse some of those savings.”
The tax added around 6.5 cent to every litre of petrol and diesel from the time of its introduction in the budget last October.
The carbon tax does not apply to electricity, where a public service obligation (PSO) levy is applied instead.
Source: REsidential - blog.myhome.ie
