Phil Flanagan has called on the minister for the Department for Social Development, Nelson McCausland to take action.
A local MLA has described the level of fuel poverty in the North as, ‘shocking’.
Sinn Fein member, Phil Flanagan has called on the minister for the Department for Social Development, Nelson McCausland to take action.
Mr Flanagan Sinn Fein’s was speaking during a lively Stormont debate on fuel poverty, during which the Minister revealed that 33,000 households here need to spend 25% or more of their income to adequately heat their home.
Households are considered by the Government to be in ‘fuel poverty’ if they would have to spend more than 10% of their household income on fuel to keep their home in a satisfactory condition.
The minister told MLAs that, in 2009, it was estimated that 44% of households were experiencing fuel poverty.
“According to the 2011 house condition survey, that figure rose to 42%. Research has also highlighted 33,000 households across Northern Ireland that need to spend 25% or more of their income to adequately heat their home.
However, he stated that without the measures delivered by his Department, the rates of fuel poverty would be significantly higher.
He said 120,000 homes have had energy efficiency measures installed under the £150m warm homes scheme, and, over 14,500 old, inefficient boilers had been replaced.
He went on: “I will shortly launch a new energy efficiency scheme that will find and target the most vulnerable homes, those where people live in severe fuel poverty.
“There is no doubt that more work could be done in tackling fuel poverty. However, I am restricted to the work that can be done within allocated budgets.”
He highlighted the fact that people here remain reliant on domestic heating oil and expressed the hope that introducing gas to the west could alleviate problems.
However, Mr Flanagan was not convinced.
He stated: “It is pretty shocking that one third of people are expected to pay more than one quarter of their income to heat their home adequately. We deserve better from the Minister than listing the causes of fuel poverty.
”The Minister says that we can talk about increasing household income, but really he is talking about cutting household income. He wants to cut the basic rate of welfare for people and to impose heinous sanctions.
“How does he tie the two together? You are talking about increasing household income to tackle fuel poverty, but at the same time you want to take hundreds of millions of pounds out of the most vulnerable households in our society.”
At this week’s special Development Committee meeting in the Townhall, representatives from the NI Housing Executive reported that, last year 486 private sector homes were insulated, 7 had heating installed, 15 had both insulation and heating installed and 45 had internal dry lining insulation.
And, through the DSD’s Boiler replacement scheme, which is part financed with EU grant aid, 252 new boilers have been replaced in owner occupied homes.
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