700,000 will have no heating over Christmas, union claims

More than 700,000 people will go without heating this Christmas due to fuel poverty, according to the Unite trade union.

Drawing on recently published income and poverty data from the Central Statistics Office the union says 16 per cent of the population experience enforced coldness in their homes.

In a report published this morning, A Cold Christmas, Unite gives an indicative county-by-county breakdown of how many people suffer fuel poverty. They arrived at the figures using CSO data and per capita income levels in each county.

In Dublin, it says 164,000 people (13 per cent of the population) cannot afford to heat their home adequately, followed by 82,200 in Cork (16 per cent), 41,100 in Galway (16.5 per cent), 32,500 in Kildare (17.9 per cent) and 30,700 in Donegal (19.5 per cent).

“This is an indictment of failed Government policies and perverse official priorities,” says the report. “In the year before the recession, 2007, over a quarter of a million people were unable to afford heating sometime during the year. By 2014 this number had nearly trebled to over 720,000.”

The main causes of fuel poverty, says the report, are low income, high energy costs, poor home energy efficiency and under-occupancy of homes.

Personal impact

“The personal impact on those suffering fuel deprivation is difficult to imagine for anyone who has not experienced enforced lack of heat. It impacts on personal dignity, health, living standards, social participation and work.”

It can, says the Public Health Institute, result in increased risk of respiratory illness, worsening arthritis, high blood pressure, social isolation, impaired mental health and death.

This is not only a great cost to those affected, it is a loss to society as people are not able to participate fully. It is also a cost to health and social services.

The union says the Government should make a once-off payment of €55 to all recipients of the fuel allowance and of the Family Income Supplement, in January to ensure they can heat their homes over Christmas.

The Government should also restore all core social welfare rates to their 2009 levels, within three years, and introduce a living wage over seven years.

Unite is also proposing an energy efficiency retrofit of all social housing and private rented housing – the latter to be funded through long-term State loans.