Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important motion today. I have previously spoken about fuel poverty in Donegal and there have been many studies, reports and papers on the continuing issue of fuel poverty in Ireland. Five years ago, Unite the Union published a report entitled, A Cold Christmas, which examined the rate of fuel poverty on a county-by-county basis. It followed the release of results from the CSO survey of income and living conditions, SILC, on deprivation, poverty, and household income. One of the questions in the survey was: "Have you ever had to go without heating during the last 12 months through lack of money...have you had to go without a fire on a cold day, or go to bed to keep warm or light the fire late because of lack of coal-fuel?" At that time, more than 700,000 people across the Republic answered "Yes", and 30,700 of those respondents were in Donegal. The report found that Donegal had the highest level of fuel deprivation. Donegal also has the lowest level of household income across the country.

In 2019, Social Justice Ireland reported that almost 400,000 people in Ireland experienced fuel deprivation, while Ireland was also ranked among the top five in a EUROSTAT report for energy price increases. It seems that fuel deprivation and energy poverty have been a significant problem in Ireland forever. Detached houses in rural areas with inappropriate or no insulation and our cold climate have created an environment where people are cold and unwell due to insufficient heat in their homes. That was all before Covid-19 hit. Since this time last year, the world has been turned on its head, with economies, industries and countries closing down while a deadly, contagious pandemic spread across the globe. The pandemic has wreaked havoc on employment. In Ireland, in the middle of this third level 5 lockdown, almost 500,000 people are in receipt of the PUP, a newly introduced social welfare payment for those who lost their jobs, permanently or temporarily, due to Covid-19.

The motion states: "a person who loses their job cannot access the Fuel Allowance until they are in receipt of a Jobseeker's payment for more than 390 days (over 15 months)" and that "the Fuel Allowance is not available to recipients of the PUP."

Not only are more people unemployed now than ever, but more people are working from home. Those of us lucky enough to have a home have higher household costs due to work, home schooling, multiple tenants working from home and so on. This motion is timely and important.

The stress, anxiety and uncertainty of the pandemic is not something that we can control, but the Government does hold the purse strings and can take certain measures to help residents across Ireland. It was a long, dark and cold January and granting the fuel allowance to people in receipt of PUP is one easy step which should have been taken immediately and would have alleviated it.

I commend Senator Lynn Boylan on the Living in Energy Poverty report which followed an online cost of energy survey at the end of last year. Almost 300 people responded to the survey and it is very important to hear their real-life experiences and personal stories. Too often public policy and legislation are discussed in a vacuum and we just look at costs and figures rather than the quality of life of residents around Ireland.

That said, it is important to collect, collate and analyse data to ensure that Government programmes are meeting their objectives. I have often said that I wish this Government was not reactive but proactive. In that vein, I was reading Spending Review 2020: Social Impact Assessment – SEAI Programmes Targeting Energy Poverty, published by the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service, IGEES, in October 2020. The paper looked at the SEAI’s Better Energy Homes and Better Energy Communities schemes but found that the level of data collected was insufficient to provide an assessment of the schemes’ impact on recipients. It was not possible to determine whether the schemes brought recipients out of energy poverty.It is hard to believe that we would spend money without trying to determine if it is having any effect. Then again, perhaps it is not so hard to believe when one considers what else this Government does not ask questions about.

Apparently, there is a CSO-led project to establish indicators for energy poverty in which the Department will be participating. This project is expected to provide an evidence base to improve the targeting of energy efficiency schemes and for a future, updated social impact assessment. The IGEES report also states that the Department and the ESRI are undertaking research which includes "an examination of the impact of retrofitting on alleviating energy poverty". This is happening after the event and after the work has been done. Unsurprisingly, the SEAI does not record the building energy rating, BER, of homes before works undertaken under the warmer homes scheme. This creates such a dearth of information on the extent of fuel deprivation and energy poverty throughout the country.

Why is the Government funding programmes but not having the impact of programmes properly assessed? Some charities, NGOs and other civil society groups would have their funding stripped if they were not providing an accurate impact analysis and evaluation of the outcome of expenditure. The IGEES report suggests that assessment information could be used to assess the schemes’ impact on taking recipients out of energy poverty and on the broader cohort who are considered to be at risk of, or experiencing, energy poverty. I suppose it is better late than never.

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