Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat. I would have preferred to have the information in front of me so I could have gone through it. There has been a reduction of 40 payments made between 2025 and 2026, if what the Minister has said is correct. I find that unbelievable. More and more people are coming to my office every week in urgent need - people in debt, whether in arrears on electricity or on gas; people who have had a car break down and do not have the money to fix it; people who are struggling to pay for confirmations and communions at this time of year. For it to be less, that is a failure of the Government to let people know the payment is there. There are just over 1,000 people availing of the scheme in Cork; that is only a fraction of the people who are in trouble. We know from information that came out this week that over 300,000 people are in energy arrears. The ESRI found today that more than one in ten households cannot afford a warm home. How do these figures match with that? They just do not.

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