New research carried out for the children’s charity Barnardo’s has found that just over one-third of families went into arrears on their energy bills at some point over the last 12 months.<\/p>\n
The findings show that the 36% of those surveyed fell behind on their bills in the last year due to a lack of money, up from 32% compared in 2025.<\/p>\n
The charity said its ‘Cost of Living \u2013 Impact on Children 2026’ report shows the financial pressures and difficulties on families due to inflation.<\/p>\n
It found that 30% of parents surveyed felt at some point that they did not have enough food to feed their children – up from 28% in 2025.<\/p>\n
The research also shows two in five parents had borrowed money at least once over the past 12 months.<\/p>\n
The charity said it has seen a “steady increase” in the number of parents who believe cost of living issues have significantly affected their children in the last five years, with up to 80% of families saying their children have felt the impact in some negative way.<\/p>\n
The research was carried out Am\u00e1rach Research with a nationally representative survey of 1,000 parents\/guardians.<\/p>\n
It also found 44% of parents surveyed skipped meals or reduced their portion size so their children would have enough to eat, with 16% using a food bank – up from 12% in 2025.<\/p>\n
Over half of parents, 55%, were concerned about having enough money to put fuel in their car, with 17% saying they cut back or went without medical\/health appointments.<\/p>\n
One in five parents said cost of living pressures have not negatively affected their child, with children in one- parent families far more likely to have been significantly negatively impacted by cost of living issues than those in two parents homes.<\/p>\n
The charity said increased supports for families most at risk are needed if the Government is to meet their target of ending child poverty by 2030.<\/p>\n
Barnardo’s is calling for an increase in the Child Support Payment and the Fuel Allowance, and to commit to reduce the disparity in the cost of energy for those on pre-paid metres.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New research carried out for the children’s charity Barnardo’s has found that just over one-third of families went…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60],"class_list":["post-513477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513477","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=513477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}