Residential electricity bills fell in 2022, gas bills rose steeply, CSO finds

Government interventions in domestic electricity costs last year stopped bills reaching record highs, but gas customers ended up paying hundreds of euro more as prices spiralled, new data indicates.

The research from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) shows the median residential electricity bill fell by €359 to €909 last year, a drop of 28 per cent.

The median residential bill for gas, however, climbed by €232 or 31 per cent to €972 over the same period.

Despite a significant spike in the cost of energy following Russian’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the midpoint price paid by Irish consumers last year fell as result of the two payments that brought costs below the average going back almost a decade 2015, the figures show.

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This was substantially lower than the median of €1,268 paid in 2021.

The figure is also lower than the €1,095 recorded in 2015 and the €1,030 recorded in 2016, the lowest median price point in recent years.

The price outlined by the CSO includes two energy credits applied to all electricity bills last year that took €400 off the median annual cost.

Without the credits, the median cost would have climbed to €1,309, a price that would have been a high watermark in recent times.

While consumers benefit from the energy credits on their electricity bills, there was no such relief on the table for gas customers, leading to prices going in the opposite direction.

For the seven years before 2022, the median price of domestic gas was put at around €750, according to the CSO data, but it jumped to €972 last year.

According to the CSO, the percentage of households paying less than €1,500 for electricity increased from 65 per cent in 2021 to 79 per cent in 2022.

It noted that 53 per cent of households that paid between €750 and €1,000 for electricity in 2021 paid between €500 and €750 in 2022, while 29 per cent paid less than €500 in 2022.

Meanwhile, the percentage of households paying less than €1,500 for gas reduced from 92 per cent to 79 per cent last year.

Some 40 per cent of those who paid between €500 and €750 for gas in 2021 paid between €750 and €1,000 in 2022.

The highest median residential electricity bill costs by county in 2022 were in Kildare at €1,043, Meath at €1,027 and Wicklow at €1,007.

The lowest were seen in Donegal at €746, Leitrim at €768 and Mayo at €826.

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