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

Last week in the House, we discussed the issue of disconnections for users of prepay meters. On Friday, after holding my weekly clinic, I went to meet senior citizens who live in council accommodation. While I was meeting these elderly residents, an emergency occurred. They informed me of a man who had just got out of hospital, having spent five or six months there following multiple strokes, and who needed a nebuliser to allow him to continue breathing and so on. He had been released from hospital earlier in the week and when he opened the door of his house, he discovered that the prepay electricity had been disconnected while he was in hospital. Unbeknown to him, while he was in hospital, he was being charged €1.50 a day, which had clocked up to a grand total of €365. Unless he had the money to pay that debt of €365, he would have no electricity. For the next three or four days, therefore, he had nowhere to plug in his nebuliser, no cooker, no lighting and no power in his house. When we walked into the house to meet him, he was bawling crying. This elderly man had been reduced to tears and was terrified as to how he would address this.

Luckily, we got him sorted that day, although it was extremely difficult and involved phoning PrepayPower and the council and, eventually, after much argument, getting a code from them because we stressed that this man's life was danger, that his health was at stake and that he had been left in this utterly unacceptable position for several days. Even we had difficulty putting in codes and so on to finally get his electricity turned back on. Quite honestly, that man is lucky to be alive, given he had nowhere to plug in his nebuliser. When the Government states that there should be no disconnections and commits to doing its best or endeavouring or whatever the expression is to ensure that people on prepay power will not be cut off, here is an example of what actually happened to a sick and vulnerable elderly man. We need certainty, and people like that man and many others who could find themselves in that situation this winter need cast-iron guarantees that they are not going to be disconnected. What is particularly shocking in this case is that people can be disconnected and find themselves with a €365 bill without even having used the electricity. It is beyond belief. We hear these somewhat abstract debates in the House or abstract assurances from the Government, but that is the reality of what goes on.

I will now similarly set out the situation for people who use district heating systems. The Government, and in particular the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, should know this because Clúid, Tuath and Respond, all of which provide social housing to people on the lowest incomes, wrote to him earlier this year warning him of the dire situation facing many of their tenants in social housing who had experienced increases of up to 600% in their energy costs, with bills rising from average figures of about €50 a month to €150 a month.

These massive increases are completely unsustainable. They appealed to the Minister in February or March to do something about this but, as of now, nothing has been done.

I have some bills in front of me from one of the district heating companies. Thousands of people are caught in these situations, but I want to underline the fact that many of them are social housing tenants. People are also affected by this more generally, however. The bills are quite extraordinary. People are paying unit rates that are approximately treble what most people pay. The energy hikes are affecting most people but this is far worse. The biggest component of the bill is a network heating charge. The latter is approximately 50% of every bill. Even if a person does not turn on the heating, he or she is paying this charge. A person pays a standing charge and a network heating charge, which is the biggest component of the bill. I am looking at a bill for €489 for 59 days. Some €91 of that is for user charges, €26 is for standing charges and €110 is for a network heating charge. In other words, a person pays it regardless of whether he or she uses any electricity. Something has to be done about the extortionate rates that are being charged to people on district heating systems.

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