Ms Issy Petrie:

I thank the committee for the invitation to present today on our experience supporting people in energy poverty. This is an important opportunity to reflect on the impacts of this winter and prepare for the year ahead.

Society of St. Vincent de Paul members are currently seeing the hardship caused by ongoing high energy prices. Last year, we saw a 40% increase in requests for assistance related to energy. In the first quarter of this year, we have seen energy requests increase by approximately a further 50% against the same period last year. This is part of a wider trend of our overall requests rising by approximately 20%.

Members are now supporting many households who are facing multiple bills that they cannot clear before the next one comes through. The situation continues to be extreme for prepay customers who continue to face self-disconnection when there is simply no more money to feed the meter. People are forced to make strategic choices between essentials such as to have food through the week, or energy through the week. No-one should be faced with that dilemma. It takes a toll on people's emotional, mental and physical health and our members see that distress when they are assisting people.

The situation is clearly spelt out in the energy deprivation figures from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, from 2022. The rates are stark and show the inequitable distribution of hardship that our society also witnesses. Around one in five single parents and people who were out of work due to illness, disability or unemployment could not afford to keep their homes warm enough in 2022. Rates for renters almost doubled and are three times as high as for owner-occupiers.

The rate for people living rurally increased fourfold.

To stop this trend continuing, we need to have clear priorities for action ahead of next winter. Our particular concerns at this time are putting in place the assistance people need to pay back arrears without cutting back on other essential expenditure; making sure prepay customers do not face another winter without sufficient protection; and, longer term, making sure we are tackling all the causes of energy poverty to bring it to an end across income, energy costs and energy efficiency. I will outline a number of our recommendations that we believe are necessary to achieve this.

With core social protection rates not keeping up with inflation, we also saw the rate of the fuel allowance frozen, with the choice to opt instead for ad hocpayments. While those payments provided essential support to households, we are now faced with a severely devalued fuel allowance. The fuel allowance payment also does not reach everyone who is in energy poverty. We are particularly concerned about people on the working family payment, including the 103,000 children in those families.

We would like to see targeted action on energy prices through a Government-subsidised social tariff to provide a discounted energy tariff for households on means-tested social welfare payments. This would enable the Government to provide focused support that can offer stable costs for an essential service and respond to market conditions.

We need to see further action on our consumer protection infrastructure to ensure the experiences and voices of consumers are clearly heard within the market. We would like to see further monitoring and research as part of a consumer protection strategy from the regulator, and a new consumer advocacy agency.

Finally, and crucially, we propose a new service of community energy advisers who provide one-to-one support for people to navigate the energy market, to access available financial supports, to provide energy efficiency advice and easy, quick installations at home and to support access to retrofitting grants. This is needed not only to support people through the price crisis but also to ensure a just energy transition in the coming years.

A key point we would like to make today is that while we have left winter behind, we are still facing an energy price, and energy poverty, crisis. It is now that we need to be stepping in with people's bills and addressing the risks facing prepay customers. Ongoing energy costs will continue to be unaffordable for many throughout summer, and we need to enter next winter having learnt lessons from this year. We also need to make sure our longer term strategies are adequate in the face of ongoing higher prices, higher levels of energy deprivation and a rapidly changing energy landscape.