In recent years, dividends from the State’s portfolio of commercial companies had become very much a story of ESB leading the pack, with the energy company paying more than half of those dividends from 2021 to 2024. While ESB remains the single largest contributor of dividends to the Exchequer, the picture is now more balanced, with a surge in dividends pushing receipts to the second-highest total on record this year. ESB’s dominance culminated in 2023 when, on the back of an unprecedented €700 million pre-tax profit driven by the 2022 energy price crisis associated with the war in Ukraine, the…

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