Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

Fuel poverty has been described as the inability to afford adequate warmth in a home, or the inability to achieve adequate warmth because of the energy inefficiency of the home. The primary contributory factor to fuel poverty is the low energy efficiency of parts of the private and public housing stock. Such problems relate mainly to older housing with poor insulation and draught-proofing or inefficient heating systems. All new housing, including social housing, is being built to modern energy efficiency standards. Local housing authorities are undertaking an ongoing programme, including draught insulation and energy efficiency, to upgrade the older social housing stock and provide better living conditions generally for tenants.

My Department is co-operating with a number of organisations, including Sustainable Energy Ireland, the Combat Poverty Agency and the Department of the Environment Heritage and Local Government, in an action research project to review the effectiveness of Sustainable Energy Ireland's warmer homes scheme. The 2006 budget made a grant of €2 million available to Sustainable Energy Ireland to undertake a fuel poverty research project. The reports on these fuel research projects will help to inform Government policy on fuel poverty.

The main role of the social welfare system in this issue is to provide income supports. Government policy in recent years has focused on increasing primary social welfare rates significantly to ensure that people on social welfare can meet their basic living costs, including heating costs, throughout the year. Since December 2001, overall inflation has increased by 24% while energy product prices have increased by 56%. However, increases in social welfare payments have been between 71% and 88% in the same period.

In addition to primary payments, there are a number of social welfare programmes to assist with heating costs, specifically the national fuel allowance scheme, the household benefits package and the special heating needs supplement. These arrangements too have been improved in recent years. The Department will continue to co-operate with other Departments and agencies on fuel poverty research as appropriate. However, the main focus will be to increase social welfare payments in real terms to enable social welfare recipients to better meet heating and other needs.

See this speech in context