Electricity price hike puts the lights out

BETWEEN the jigs and the reels of galloping electricity prices, your front page news on August 16 again shone some cold light on our current economic plight.

The bright sparks in the ESB are now disconnecting some 900 households per month, or nearly 30 households per day.

According to the last CSO census in 2006, the average number of people per household in Ireland was nearly 2.9. That means that every month about 2,600 people are left without a most basic necessity of modern living. At that rate, 50,000 of us could be disconnected by mid-March 2012. That would be the population size of a small Irish city. It would fill the new Aviva Stadium for a concert by the Electric Light Orchestra, sponsored by the ESB.