Some 14% of Irish households in 2024 said they were unable to afford adequate warmth or pay energy bills in full, according to a new report from the Economic and Social Research Institute.<\/p>\n
The study found that this was well below the 25% level recorded during the financial crisis that began in 2008.<\/p>\n
The findings are based on research carried out before the recent rise in energy prices caused by the war in Iran.<\/p>\n
The ESRI said that households experience energy poverty when they are unable to afford essential services, such as adequately heating their homes, lighting, cooking or powering appliances.<\/p>\n
This poverty, it said, is driven by a combination of low disposable income, high energy costs and poor housing and is strongly related to income inequality, unemployment and deprivation.<\/p>\n
When multiple measures of energy affordability are taken into account, the ESRI added, 30% of households experience some form of energy affordability challenge.<\/p>\n
The report found that the most cost-effective supports are those targeting the least well off.<\/p>\n
It said that people affected would need, on average, \u20ac480 of additional income annually to exit fuel poverty.<\/p>\n
That would cost the State \u20ac370m per year.<\/p>\n
The figure is much lower than the up to \u20ac575m spent on universal electricity credits by the Government in 2024.<\/p>\n
The ESRI research was funded by the Department of Climate, Energy and Environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some 14% of Irish households in 2024 said they were unable to afford adequate warmth or pay energy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":["post-424294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}