You said the ESB were selling them gas and ELECTRICITY at last years prices. What fraction of their sales are fixed rate contracts for gas and electricity to the government agencies that your so sure they turned what had been a 679M profit into a loss that now needs to be paid for by the general public??? Much of the ESB's electricity generation isn't dependent on gas so even the threefold increase in price of gas this year is extremely unlikely to convert a 679M profit into the loss you're trying to claim.
I never said they are making a loss, I'm the one who gave you their profit figures ffs!! So what exactly do you think I'm trying to claim??
I said they are making a loss on the gas and electricity they are selling at fixed prices (under the public procurement process which applies to all government departments), and the general public are hence paying over (lets say 15%) what we should be paying so as ESB can keep their margins at 10% or whatever they are, to offset these losses.
Now lest you think the HSE and other government agencies don't use much electricity, well the public sector employs 300 thousand people in Ireland, that is quite a significant number, add in a hospital like CUH which has the power on basically 24/7, it probably (guessing here) uses as much electricity as Midleton or a similar sized town. How many hospitals in Ireland? All getting electricity at a third of the market rate.
I'm not sure when the current public tender agreement rolls off, but I would imagine when it does individual households will benefit somewhat as the HSE et al will be locked into higher prices, which means the general public won't be charged to subsidise these organisations, which is currently the case.
Of course if gas prices crashed and the HSE et al were locked in at higher rates for a few years than they would end up subsidising us to an extent.
I better give you an example, as I don't want to be replying to you all week.
You buy two apples for 5 euro (2.5 Euro each) and have a 100% margin which means you sell each apple for 5 euro and make a 5 euro profit in total and a profit on each apple of 2.5 Euros.
Now suppose you have a contract with Kingy to sell him an apple for 1 Euro then you have to sell the other apple to me for 9 Euro to maintain your 100% margin.
You still make your 5 euro profit, but you made a loss of 1.5 Euro on the apple you sold to Kingy and a profit of 6.5 Euros on the apple you sold to me. Therefore I have basically subsidised Kingy.
Hope that explains things to you.