Soundy you might want to sit down for this but the ESB are on track to make about 675 million this year so far more than 60 million a quarter.
As for the question of price qouging it is probably a bit more nuanced. Below are profits for the last 4 years.
2019 616 million
2020 682 million
2021 679 million
2022 675 million expected
The above indicates their profits have been fairly steady and thus indicates there has been no price gouging with the increase in prices merely that margins have been maintained to those of other years.
However that's not quite the full story, the spike in energy prices has meant those on a long term fixed contract i.e all government agencies (HSE etc) and whoever you work for you sponger, would have entered into a fixed rate contract under the government procurement process, meaning the ESB are selling electricity and gas to these agencies at a loss (last years prices) and to make up for that they are charging the rest of us a lot more than market rates would normally dictate.
Therefore it is individual households and small businesses who are basically subsidising large government agencies and possibly other large users of electricity like data centres if they too have long term contracts with the ESB.
