Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the Minister of State. The recent cold snap has reminded us all how important it is to have a home that is warm. Light and heat are basic human needs. For too many people, the sight of a bill from their electricity or gas provider strikes them with fear and others simply go without light and heat as they are burdened with energy poverty.

I am currently conducting a survey about people's experience of energy poverty and the preliminary results are heartbreaking. People are in terrible positions where they are being forced to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children. The health implications are dire, and the mental strain is significant. A recently produced ESRI report showed the harmful effects of energy poverty, especially on children's respiratory health.

We know that Covid-19 has exacerbated energy poverty because more people have been forced to stay at home and to use electricity and heat, but for some groups the situation is even worse. Travellers living in mobile homes or trailers are nine times more likely to go without heat than the general population and they spend five or six times more of their income on energy than the rest of the population. Renters tend to live in poorly insulated homes, as do people with disabilities. Those homes are more likely to be rated E, F or G on the BER system.

The warmer homes scheme is welcome for many, but it is not up to the task of addressing energy poverty for many of the groups. It only benefits a subgroup of people who experience energy poverty.A total of 75% of the scheme's beneficiaries are elderly homeowners, but there are many others experiencing energy poverty who are left out. What about the working family that is struggling to make ends meet and earns just too much to qualify for the warmer homes scheme but too little to avail of the grants? I ask the Minister of State to review the eligibility requirements for the warmer homes scheme.

According to the ESRI, there are three drivers to energy poverty. One is low household incomes, making it harder for people to pay their bills. I welcome the fact that the State weighs in with the fuel allowance and social welfare payments. The second driver is inefficient homes, and while the State is doing something to tackle that, I would like it to extend the eligibility criteria. However, nothing seems to happening with the third major driver of energy poverty, namely, high energy prices. Why is the Minister not calling for the State to intervene and regulate the high cost of energy? Just this year there was a 130% hike in the public service obligation, PSO, levy charged on electricity bills, and this hike comes on the back of reductions in the cost of wholesale electricity. Like we have been promised, it is becoming cheaper to generate electricity from indigenous, renewable resources such as wind instead of fossil fuels like coal and gas, but despite the lower costs of purchasing the electricity, the consumer bills are still going up. Why are the savings from the transition not being passed on to the consumer? As a member of the Green Party, I know that it is something that the Minister of State would want to address.

We hear constantly that the PSO levy is set by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, but I believe that that is passing the buck. The Minister of State should be exploring how the CRU calculates the PSO, how it ensures that the transition benefits everybody, and that the PSO does not burden those who are in energy poverty. In previous parliamentary questions, the Minister of State had recommended to households to reduce their consumption of energy or switch suppliers, but this is easier said than done, especially for someone with a poor credit rating. There are tools at the Minister of State's disposal and the State could strengthen its regulatory role. I implore the Minister of State to explore the options in reducing the cost of energy.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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I thank Senator Boylan for raising this important issue, and it is something that I feel strongly about myself, particularly when it comes to low-income families, and the Senator mentioned the Traveller community. She is correct that these groups are much more exposed to high energy costs than wider society, and I accept her point. I am taking this Commencement matter on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, who is busy this afternoon participating in a meeting of the EU transport Council.

The Government is fully committed to combating energy poverty and protecting the most vulnerable in society. The Government provides extensive supports for household energy costs. There are specific schemes aimed at those at risk of energy poverty, including the household benefits package and the fuel allowance. Government policy has supported the introduction of competition to energy markets to drive down prices. Consumers can now make significant savings by switching energy suppliers, somewhat mitigating the impact of price rises, but I do take on board Senator Boylan's point in respect of the capacity of consumers to do that.

However, upgrading the efficiency of someone's home is the best long-term solution to helping a low-income household to manage their energy bills. It tackles the root cause of the problem as opposed to treating the symptoms. Free energy efficiency upgrades have been a pillar of Government action on alleviating energy poverty for the past 20 years. To date, more than 142,000 homes have received free upgrades under the better energy warmer homes scheme. This scheme is funded by my Department and administered by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI. It delivers a range of energy efficiency measures free of charge to low income households vulnerable to energy poverty. This leaves the occupants better able to afford to heat their homes to an adequate level.

There has been substantial progress in reducing energy poverty since 2016. The Government's strategy to combat energy poverty was published that year, setting out a number of actions to alleviate the burden of energy poverty on the most vulnerable in society. The focus of this strategy was on high-impact actions which aimed to make a real difference to the lives of those in energy poverty.

Over the lifetime of the strategy, the Government has taken a number of steps to alleviate energy poverty. Free upgrades were carried out in over 23,000 lower income homes under the main SEAI energy poverty schemes. The warmer homes scheme has started providing deeper measures, increasing the investment in each home and increasing the benefits to the homeowners. A consultation on energy efficiency in the rented sector has also been completed with recommendations to follow in 2021. The allocations for retrofit of social housing have also increased significantly, with an allocation of €65 million for 2021. Funding for the SEAI energy poverty retrofit schemes has increased dramatically over the period, from €15 million in 2015 to more than €109 million in budget 2021.This progress is evident from the work undertaken by the ESRI on the level and extent of energy poverty in Ireland over time. This work found that the proportion of households in or at risk of energy poverty has reduced from 28% to 17.4% over the lifetime of the strategy. I consider that to be good progress, but there is still a long way to go.

The programme for Government and the climate action plan set highly ambitious targets for the number and depth of retrofits to be completed by 2030. We need to retrofit 500,000 homes and install 400,000 heat pumps in existing homes over the next ten years. It is crucial that we support low-income households to participate in this transition. For this reason, the programme for Government commits €5 billion to part fund a socially progressive national retrofit programme targeting all homes but with a particular focus on the midlands region and on social and low-income tenancies. In practice this funding will mean that more households can receive free energy efficiency upgrades, making their homes warmer, healthier and cheaper to run.

In addition, the climate action plan made a commitment to review energy poverty schemes to ensure they target those most in need. The Minister's Department has been working on this action and the

Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister of State and I welcome his comments. The Minister of State referred to the combat energy poverty strategy, which was from 2016 to 2019. A parliamentary response from the Minister, however, said that a review of the implementation of that strategy will be completed in 2021. This is a whole two years after it has run out. We are aware that the St. Vincent de Paul is currently spending €5 million to support people with the costs of energy. Will the Minister of State take it back to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, to see if the review could be expedited, because two years is a long gap between an energy strategy, and that any new strategy would have binding targets for the Minister in regard to energy poverty? Even with climate change we are aware that unless the targets are binding we are very unlikely in this country to meet them.