Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is absolutely freezing outside, and I think most people have felt that cold. We should bear this in mind over the next number of weeks because we have hundreds of thousands of people in this country affected by fuel poverty. For elderly people, in some cases, it is life threatening. There are hundreds of thousands of people in receipt of the fuel allowance. These are, in the main, people on very low incomes who are trying to heat their homes in the current freezing temperatures. This is a real social problem. It is also an environmental problem because people on low incomes and living in poorly insulated homes have to spend massive amounts of money to keep their homes and themselves warm. Often, they cannot do so but insofar as they try to do so, they are wasting huge amounts of energy.

This time of the year brings into sharp focus the need to do something dramatic and radical in terms of providing supports, grants, funding and assistance to people to insulate their homes or for the State to move in directly and have them insulated, thereby achieving two important objectives: one, keeping people warm who are freezing and, two, dramatically reducing CO2 emissions if it is done right. The annual cost of heating an A1 energy rated home is approximately €280. For those living in the lowest energy rated homes, which, in the main, are those on low incomes, that cost per annum can be €3,000. The people who are most affected by these issues have the least resources. The grants provided under the energy schemes are nowhere near sufficient to assist people on low incomes to insulate their homes. Those living in private rented accommodation and social housing, if they wanted to, cannot insulate their homes. The public schemes in this regard are abysmal. Will the Government address the issue of retrofit insulation and supporting people affected by fuel poverty and the cold to insulate their homes and thus also address a major cause of CO2 emissions?

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