Dr. Tricia Keilthy:

I agree with Senator Mulherin's concerns on the targeted nature of the fuel allowance and the fact it is means tested. A large proportion of people, in particular the working poor and households with children, will not benefit if carbon tax is recycled through this scheme. Approximately 40% of the poorest children, those in receipt of a qualified child increase, are living in households that do not get the fuel allowance. If carbon tax is offset through that scheme a whole range of people who are experiencing energy poverty would be missed.

As I outlined in the opening statement, the warmer homes scheme is a good one for people who are on a low income and who own their own home but we know that energy efficiency is especially poor in the private rented sector and in social housing. The commitments in the climate action plan on deep retrofits of social housing is welcome, but there is a significant challenge in terms of the private rented sector. We would like to see an action plan in terms of introducing minimum energy efficiency standards in the private rented sector so that those households are able to access grants, whether that is through incentivising landlords in an awareness campaign or finding some way of linking it to security of tenure as well. For example, landlords who agreed to let their property to HAP tenants for a five-year term could access grants to compensate.

We have a lot of information on energy poverty. We have the subjective measures in the EU survey on income and living conditions, EU-SILC, that is collected annually. I understood the household budget survey will now move to an annual collection as well, so we will be able to track energy poverty in terms of that expenditure method. One of the recommendations we made to the national climate and energy plan is that a baseline energy poverty measure would be set for this year. The current strategy to combat energy poverty ends in 2019 and we do not know what will succeed it. It is important to say that as well. What we suggested for the national climate and energy plan is that a baseline would be set using both the household expenditure method and a subjective method and one would set a target to eliminate energy poverty by 2030, so it would work alongside our climate action targets as well. That is something we have been advocating.