A good stove is great, far more efficient and far less hassle than a fireplace e.g. can be lit / cleaned in a minutes and can stay "in" overnight. Also safer e.g. for kids. Masses of choice, ...
We've had Airtricity for a while now; no issues and the price is same (I think); ESB continues to be responsible for distribution so outages etc. would not be Airtricity's responsibility anyway. It's ...
I wouldn't call electic showers "useless", they are fairly easy to retrofit but they eat electricity and give relatively low flow rates so on a new build / extention you'd be best advised to ...