If the ESB was privatised as proposed by the Progressive Democrats, consumers could face a similar deterioration in services to those experienced in California, the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Mr David Begg, told the ESBOA annual conference in Galway at the weekend.
Mr Begg made a spirited defence of semi-state companies which, he said, were threatened by a combination of corporate greed, EU deregulation and senior civil servants who seemed to believe "passionately" in privatisation.
He said there had been "a sustained campaign against public ownership" for the past 20 years.
"If State companies are not openly attacked, as they are on a regular basis in the Sunday papers, they are generally referred to in pejorative terms, usually as 'troubled this' or 'under-performing that'.
"Contrary to public perceptions, the reality is that the State companies have not been a burden on the taxpayer for a long time and have, in recent years, been contributing of the order of £500 million profit to the Exchequer."
In the UK, Mr Begg continued, "so-called private 'entrepreneurs' have made hundreds of millions through acquisitions and the granting of licences to act in competition with State companies. Significantly, these fortunes were made without the people involved adding any value whatsoever."
In Ireland, "the playing field was substantially tilted in favour of new entrants to the market and even as the market has matured the tilt has not been redressed."
An important factor was the attitude of senior civil servants. "In my opinion they believe passionately in privatisation," Mr Begg said. "They facilitated the process by starving the State companies of investment over the years."
He added: "The most recent manifestation of this hostility was the case of the ESB's attempt to expand overseas in Poland. This proposal, as you know, was shot down at the last minute by government. Liberalisation and the method and degree of re-regulation is not, in my opinion, an economic question in the first instance. It is primarily a political question.
"In the case of our own country, the idea of forcing competition in electricity provisions in a market of less than four million people is irrational." The last price rise of 8 per cent had nothing to do with the needs of the ESB, Mr Begg maintained, but was conceded to ensure that market conditions were attractive enough to justify private-sector investment.
Mr Begg said open European energy markets were supposed to give a better product at lower prices. However, neither the European Commission nor the Government appeared to be learning any lessons from deregulation on the other side of the Atlantic.
"There, deregulation in California has led to the exact opposite of what was intended - an energy crisis and spiralling prices. California, one of the six richest regions of the world, has an electricity industry more akin to an east European country, with blackouts imposed on a regular basis."