Gas bills surge for Louth residents in shared heating scheme

Residents of a Co Louth housing estate have been hit with surging gas bills because their shared heating scheme is subject to more expensive commercial rates.

When it was launched by then energy minister Eamon Ryan in 2007, Dundalk's 200-home Carlinn Hall was supposed to help exemplify sustainable energy supply and use.

Now, however, those who moved there have found the cost of heating growing at an even more aggressive rate than other homeowners suffering inflated prices.

The estate’s “district energy system” is fed gas through a single pipeline which fuels a central boiler. Home heating is controlled individually, but they all incur commercial-level carbon tax rates and capacity charges.

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As a result, residents have seen bills rise by multiples of those received this time last year. The situation has led to renewed calls for regulation that would cap prices for domestic users of such schemes.

Tomás Connolly (33), who moved into the estate with his family at the end of 2019, saw his last two bimonthly bills rise to €450 and €575. By comparison, they were €181 and €258 for the same periods last year.

“It’s either [paying] the mortgage or the heating with a bill that size,” he said. “There has been uproar, the whole estate is in the same boat. I am on the lower end, there was one woman with a €1,000 bill.”

Another resident, John O Donogh (74), who has lived there for eight years with his wife Mary, said this year was the first they had any issue. Previously, the highest bill they had ever received to heat their two-bed semi, he said, came last year at €180. Their most recent bill was €375, a rise of 108 per cent.

“That is a vast rise in such a short period of time,” he said. “I was looking to see if we could change supplier but my understanding is that we can’t because we are built into a commercial rate.”

Both men said that as well as having well insulated, energy efficient homes, they have been using less gas in recent weeks due to well-publicised price hikes. With recent turbulence in Ukraine, many residents are bracing themselves for further costs.

Commercial rates

Sinn Féin TD for Louth Ruairí Ó Murchú, who raised the issue in the Dáil on Tuesday, said regulation is required urgently to ensure those using such shared schemes have their bills capped.

“We just can’t have people being absolutely screwed based on commercial rates and we have to know how many of these schemes are in the State,” he said. “We need to do whatever we can to alleviate the short term [cost] issues and then to look at the long term issues.”

The district energy system is run by Frontline Energy, a specialist company that does not make profit from the sale of gas but from standing charges to individual domestic users, in the case of Carlinn Hall €35 every 60 days. Energia, the actual gas supplier, said: "Energia does not comment on agreements with individual commercial customers, our role in such schemes is to provide gas under an agreed commercial service and we have no role concerning the broader administration and charging to residential customers."

Denise Hunt-Winston, Frontline’s customer service manager, said they were engaging with users and had also been pressing, to date unsuccessfully, for regulatory reform.

“What should really happen here is that district energy schemes should be capped in some way,” she said. “They are residential users.”

The company manages the metering and billing system, as well as customer service and engages with the management company on potential market shifts in gas prices. An increase in the unit price may prove costly, but Ms Hunt-Winston said it would avert more punitive bills, or even supply disruption, at a later stage.

A spokesman for the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications said gas prices are set by suppliers, and that each company “has its own different approach” to pricing decisions.

“Responsibility for the regulation of the gas market is solely a matter for the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU),” he said.

“As part of its statutory role, the CRU also has consumer protection functions and monitors energy retail markets to ensure that competition continues to develop for the benefit of the consumer. The CRU is directly accountable to the Oireachtas and not the Minister.”

On Carlinn Hall specifically, he said: “The heating system at Carlinn Hall has changed significantly since Minister Ryan first launched the estate in 2007.”