Tanaiste Leo Varadkar has said he will use the ESB profits to pay for the new cost of living measures introduced by the Government.

The Fine Gael leader made the remarks in the Dail when questioned by People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett.

Deputy Boyd Barrett claimed the electricity supplier had made €616m in profits in 2020 and €356 in the first half of 2021, while the company is on its way to clearing €700m in profit this year.

Barrett claimed the latest inflation was more akin to "price gouging and profiteering" sighting profits made by Energia having jumped by 46% in 2021 and 45% in 2020.

In response, the Tanaiste said: "I do not believe that the ESB should make hyper profits or bumper profits this year.

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"We've a mechanism for dealing with that. The ESB is a State-owned company. It pays the State a substantial dividend every year.

"We can take a larger dividend. So it's not the case that they can just run up huge profits and put them in a bank account somewhere.

"We are the shareholder and we if the ESB runs up huge profits this year, we can take a bigger dividend. And we can use that to help pay for some of the measures that we are announcing today."

The state is set to boost family and fuel benefits by €400m this afternoon, an increase on the figure of €1bn announced in the budget last year.

Families could be inline to gain as much as €227 in electricity credit under this new scheme, doubling the €113 credit, including VAT.

It comes as grocery price inflation hit its highest rate for more than a year as take-home grocery sales declined 4.5% in the three months to late January, according to the latest supermarket share data from Kantar.

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