Surge in number of people who cannot heat their homes - SVP

The number of people unable to heat their homes adequately has more than doubled since 2021, rising to 377,000 people, according to a new report on surging energy poverty.

The Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP) report, published today, said the unprecedented increases in domestic energy costs have led to electricity and gas bills doubling since April 2021.

The charity found that in addition to people who could not afford to heat their homes adequately, a further 98,000 people have gone without heating since 2021, rising to almost 454,000 people. An additional 118,000 people have experienced arrears on their energy bills.

The average annual electricity bill has risen from €1,000 in the spring of 2020 to €2,100 now.

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Drawing on Central Statistic Office data, the SVP found that the highest rates of energy deprivation were among one-parent families where more than one in five households couldn’t keep their homes warm enough, an almost threefold increase since 2021.

The number of households who cannot warm their home adequately has risen to 7.4 per cent of people in 2022 from 3.2 per cent the previous year.

The rate more than quadrupled among rural households to 5.7 per cent.

One in five people unable to work due to illness or disability could not heat their home adequately, almost double the figure who struggled to heat their homes two years ago.

The charity found that energy poverty affected low-income households, older households, children migrant and ethnic minority households and members of the Traveller and Roma community more than others.

The SVP said that the concentration of hardship witnessed by SVP volunteers during visits to these households has been “drastically exacerbated” by energy cost increases this year.

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The charity said that it received almost 230,000 requests for assistance from the public in 2022, an increase of about 20 per cent compared with the previous year.

At its busiest, the charity is receiving up to 1,200 requests a day.

The report warned that there were “strong associations” between households living in fuel poverty and high levels of excess winter deaths.

Fallen in value

The SVP said the State’s fuel allowance and other social welfare payments have fallen in value in real terms, failing to keep up with prices, leaving households “having to pay more from less.”

It called for supports to provide “a predictable, stable foundation for low-income households” and a social energy tariff, targeting households on means-tested social welfare payments.

“This provides a medium-term solution that will bridge the gap between significant, but ad hoc, cash transfers from government, until the point at which households in energy poverty all live in retrofitted homes,” the report says.

The SVP recommended a new consumer advocacy agency focused on the needs of consumers in a changing energy market through dialogue with the regulator, policymakers and suppliers.

The charity is pushing for affordable and sustainable repayment solutions for people in arrears, including greater monitoring of repayment plans.

It has called for improved measures to avoid disconnections for energy customers and increased protections for prepay customers who face a higher risk of being disconnected from their energy supply as they run out of credit on their meters.