Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 30 August 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action
Energy Supply and Security: Discussion
Ms Aoife MacEvilly:
That is a Government policy. We could certainly talk about a bit about vulnerable customers. The Deputy's question concerned how we identify them. There are two categories in legislation. It is not financial vulnerability that is addressed. First, it concerns vulnerability by reason of age or illness or people who might be particularly vulnerable to disconnections in winter. The second critical category of people are those who are dependent on electrically powered assisted living devices. Those are the two categories. There is a register of vulnerable customers. It is done on the basis of self declaration. Customers can register with their supplier under either one of those categories self-declaring their vulnerability and availing of the protections. That is an area where we want to increase awareness of those protections. We feel that not enough people are registered. We do not think people necessarily identify themselves as vulnerable even though they might benefit from those protections. This is somewhere we can do better, particularly this winter.
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