Re: Bord Gais v ESB - Maddness!
when plans came out, everybody told me the same, competition is good and who cares that it's to 2 state owned company that compete with each other.
But people are forgetting that there is already competition that offers up to 10% discount on what ESB is "forced" to charge, airtricity. But still people did not swap over en mass to them (maybe because they did not do too much advertising).
Now Board Gas is coming into the market offering up to 14% discount on the ESB price which after all is not set by ESB but the CER and not on what the actual cost should be but rather what ESB needs to pay their staff and infrastructure and back to the owner (goverment).
If you want competition in the market than don't just have another state body undercut ESB, get ride of the CER mandated prices for the ESB. Sure that will result in the ESB doing cost cutting and firing staff, but it's better.
So what happens next is the ESB is offering Gas with a discount on the CER mandated Board Gais prices and we call that also open competition pushing the new smaller Flogas out of the market.
This is not bringing in competition to the market, this is an attempt to continue to have state controll over the energy supply by forcing out the only 2 viable competitors (Airtricity and Flogas) out of the market by using the wealth of the ESB/Bord Gais.
On Paper this all looks nice.. See we have competition.. But in reality most people won't switch and even if they do in the end it's all paid by the tax payer anyhow because both companies will cross use profit/losses out of the 2 operations against each other.
Competition in Ireland is very funny with most people not switching even if they can save large amounts of money. Look at healthcare. I can't understand why people are not running away en masse from VHI to the cheaper (and better) Hibernian Health. And because people don't switch the goverment regulates and punishes the private companies by forcing them to pay money to the largest player, despite that it's actualy the people who are not swapping. So why do competitors have to pay for the lazy behaviour of the public?
This whole Bord Gais is nothing else than an attempt to conceal the diry situation on the irish energy market which is a large part why the cost base for companies in Ireland is so much higher.
I call it market manipulation and nothing else. Get ride of the CER mandated prices of ESB and see how it develops, I think it could go down by 20-23 % actualy if they would be forced to compete on a like by like basis.