16% of Bord Gáis customers in arrears

SOME 10 per cent of Bord Gáis’s workforce is now engaged in dealing with customer arrears, the semi-State’s chief executive said yesterday, as the company deals with a growing number of householders struggling to pay their utility bills .

“In 2007 we had 12 people dealing with credit control. That number is now 90 – roughly 10 per cent of our workforce,” John Mullins told a gathering of business leaders at a Business in the Community breakfast briefing yesterday.

Some 132,700 customers – 16 per cent of Bord Gáis’s customer base – are in arrears. This compares to 114,000 customers who were in arrears of two months or more in July. The average amount due is €270.

Mr Mullins described growing customer debt as the “biggest issue facing the utilities sector”, as rising energy prices coincide with a period of unprecedented financial difficulty for Irish consumers.

Demand for fossil fuels from India and China is driving the increase in wholesale energy prices, he said. The energy regulator approved a 22 per cent price hike for gas prices in July. Bord Gáis Energy had initially applied for a 28 per cent rise in its residential tariffs after a steep climb in wholesale prices since the start of the year. The 22 per cent hike followed a 12 per cent increase in the price of electricity.

More than 60,000 payment plans have been established by Bord Gáis so far this year to deal with the growing arrears problem, Mr Mullins said. The company has also installed pay-as-you-go meters to facilitate struggling customers, and has implemented a moratorium on disconnections during cold weather.

He said the issue of debt repayment was affecting the middle classes as well as lower earners.

“We have in this country a skilled unemployed issue for the very first time,” he said.

The average domestic gas bill, before the 22 per cent price rise, was €720 a year.

Bord Gáis, which is 97 per cent State-owned, is one of a number of semi-State companies that could be sold if the Government decides to dispose of state assets.