Éirígí Bring Campaign To Bord Gáis
Outrage at the current price of energy was brought home to Bord Gáis yesterday as Éirígí members picketed the companies head office in Dublin’s north inner city. Éirígí activists distributed hundreds of copies of their campaign leaflet to Bord Gáis employees and members of the public as part of Éirígí’s natural resources campaign.
The leaflet, which features a mock Bord Gáis bill, received an immediate response from an angry Bord Gáis management. Within minutes of the Éirígí activists arriving, commercial energy supply manager, Maurice Cullen, from the Bord Gáis’ marketing department was on the footpath claiming that Éirígí had ‘infringed intellectual property rights’, with the production of the leaflet.
Éirígí spokesperson Daithí Mac An Mháistír was on hand to challenge these assertions by the semi-state company ‘Éirígí are willing to stand behind all of the information, facts and figures contained within our leaflet. The reality is that the bills that people are paying at the moment are at least 88% higher than what they were four years ago. This has undoubtedly increased the levels of fuel poverty in Ireland and all of the associated ill-effects.’
‘The state, through granting Bord Gáis these astronomical increases, is causing huge discomfort to hundreds of thousands of Irish families. Throughout the period that gas prices have been rising; the state has assisted the theft, by Shell and other energy companies, of billions of euro worth of Ireland’s gas reserves’
Throughout the two hour protest, Éirígí activists engaged with dozens of members of the public and several local community workers who have been receiving a large number of complaints about the rise in Bord Gáis prices.