ESB has become the latest energy company to hike prices — despite one in eight of their customers being in arrears on their bills.

Irish people are calling out for more “Know Your Neighbour” type events according to a recent survey commissioned by Macra na Feirme and ESB Electric Ireland.

ESB has confirmed that customers making a genuine effort to manage their bill can now avail of its recently-announced electricity price reductions.

ELECTRICITY bills are set to fall — but the good news for householders has been tempered by the fact that Bord Gáis is looking for a price hike.

In this morning’s non-Olympic programme at the Rowing World Cup in Poznan Sinéad Jennings and Orlagh Duddy performed best of the six Irish lightweight single scullers in action, with both of them progressing to this afternoon’s lightweight women’s single (LW1x) ‘A’ final.

IRELAND’S Olympic class lightweight men’s four has progressed to the quarter-finals of the World Rowing Championships in Germany.

Four of the six Irish crews were in heats action on the opening day of the 2007 Rowing World Championships in Munich this morning.

Seven Irish boats; five of them in Olympic classes will take to the water in Lucerne, Switzerland this weekend for the final leg of this year’s Rowing World Cup series.

The Irish men’s heavyweight four (M4-) of Alan Martin, Sean Casey, Cormac Folan and Sean O’Neill were on form in this morning’s heats at the second leg of the Rowing World Cup in Amsterdam to finish second and advance directly to tomorrow’s semi-finals.

IRELAND’s lightweight four are targeting World Championship glory after their gold medal success on Saturday.