Dr. Seán Healy:

There is one small thing to bear in mind. While I agree with Dr. McDonnell on the issue of not making energy free, in that sense, but rather targeting people to protect them, bear in mind that the targeting system we have at present for fuel poverty and so on is not working. It only targets a proportion of the people who have a problem in that space. As a result, we have this bizarre situation of endless Government announcements stating that it is dealing with the energy poverty issue through raising the fuel poverty allowance by a small amount, but in actual fact it is not reaching quite a large proportion of the people who are substantially worse off. I am talking about vulnerable people who are living in poverty, many of whom cannot access money to address fuel poverty. That is quite a serious issue.

One other number that might be of interest to people in the context of this discussion is the proportion of social housing. Across the EU, an average of 20% of the housing stock is social housing, but in Ireland it is 9%. It is hardly a surprise that we have a social housing crisis. Until such time as we build dramatically more social housing units, and seriously do cost rental, then we are in serious trouble. We will be left with two-bedroom apartments for €2,200 a month that in some way or other somebody will wind up calling affordable at the rate things are going. This is surreal and loses all contact with reality.