Debate contribution: Household Energy Costs

Debate contribution by Mr Mark Durkan on 7 October 2025.

MLA

Mr Mark Durkan

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

7 October 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Household Energy Costs

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5165031

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Go raibh maith agat, a Phríomh-Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

As I was saying, the importance of a warm home cannot be overstated. We often talk about home as a place of comfort and warmth. Many of us look forward to this time of the year, as the darker evenings draw in and people think about going home and getting cosy. However, for a growing number of households in the North, the fall of autumn leaves signals not comfort but fear. It signals fear of the colder weather, higher bills and having to make that invidious and impossible choice between heating and eating. That is not the opening line of a Dickens novel but the grim reality that faces thousands of families across the North in 2025. My constituency office is already inundated with calls from people seeking support with heating their homes. The latest data from National Energy Action shows that 40% of people here are living in fuel poverty. That is over 300,000 households. For those in social housing, that figure rises to 55%. Food prices are climbing, despite global energy costs stabilising, and the pressure on family budgets is relentless, yet we have seen very little in the way of leadership from the Executive on tackling those fundamental cost-of-living issues. The crisis has not gone away, you know, even if the term itself appears to have fallen out of fashion.

It is not just about energy bills. We also need to look at the wider picture of poverty and at the provisions that are already in place: what works, what does not work and what could work better. In my constituency, I have seen so many homes — social homes, private rented homes, homes of every kind — riddled with damp. Westway in Creggan is one area that comes to mind. Older Northern Ireland Housing Executive stock there has been left to mould and decay because necessary insulation works have been delayed time and time again. Tenants pay through the roof in a fruitless effort to keep their homes warm. Heat seeps through uninsulated walls and poorly fitted windows. Many of those whom I have spoken with suffer from persistent coughs, COPD or asthma. That cannot be a coincidence. Over the past three years alone, 40,000 reports of damp have been made to the Housing Executive. That shocking figure does not include housing association homes or private tenancies, where conditions are often much worse. I recently got a photo of shocking damp, mould and leaks in private accommodation provided to a young mother and her newborn baby. Here is the kicker: I instantly recognised the property in the photographs, because, just last year, I had complained about the same property on behalf of a previous tenant. That family was moved out, but, instead of fixing the problem, another tenant was simply moved in. That is a disgrace. While Awaab's law, vital legislation to protect tenants in such conditions, is set to move through the House of Commons in the weeks ahead, the Communities Minister keeps referring my questions on the matter to a response that he gave me in March 2024. Since then, we have had no update and no progress, with no evidence of work being done. Cold, damp homes can have serious health and financial implications that hit hardest at our most vulnerable and at-risk groups: children and older people. Of households here, 31% reported health and well-being impacts because of rising energy costs, and one in four people who died here in 2022 were in fuel poverty. That should shame every one of us into action. We also see failure in how resources are used. The affordable warmth scheme, which should be our front-line defence against fuel poverty, remains underfunded and overwhelmed. In 2023-24, the scheme received over 11,500 applications, just 24% of which ended up receiving support, despite millions of pounds in Barnett consequentials flowing from Whitehall's £3·2 billion warm homes plan. Why is that money not being ring-fenced by the Executive? We need investment in our older stock of social housing, not just new builds; we need to fix what we already have. The cavity wall action plan launched in 2019 found that 63% of Housing Executive properties were not compliant with current standards. Only 9% of its stock was deemed to have sufficient cavity wall insulation. The scheme was designed to boost efficiency, yet underinvestment means that it has supported only 203 homes in four years, none of which are in Derry and Strabane — I point that out to the Minister — the area with the highest reports of damp and deprivation. I hear from social housing tenants that their long-delayed and long-awaited switch from oil to gas did not include the installation of a combi boiler, so they still have to heat water separately, at greater cost to them and to the environment. If we are serious about energy efficiency, we must be serious about value for money and outcomes, not just ticking boxes on paper. I turn to the Opposition amendment that was tabled on Wednesday, prior to the Communities Committee meeting; it is always refreshing to discover that the experts are on the same page as the SDLP.

The ideas contained in the SDLP amendment are not exactly brand new; they are in our housing report, which was launched in February. The SDLP has long championed the green new deal approach: a comprehensive, low-carbon energy strategy that includes retrofitting, renewable integration and energy efficiency as central pillars. It is crucial that we have targets, timelines and accountability. Therefore, we will not support the two mutually exclusive amendments. Our focus — I am not saying that it is not other parties' focus — is steadfastly on solutions that deliver. We support calls for a just transition —

I have no confidence that any target set by this Executive on anything will be met. Do I believe that it could be met with the proper ambition and investment and the correct attitude? I absolutely do. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. We support calls for a just transition, one that ensures that low-income families are not left behind as we decarbonise. That means introducing a statutory fuel poverty target, such as those that exist elsewhere in the UK; a social energy tariff, so that those on low incomes automatically pay less for essential energy; and proper funding for retrofitting programmes. We cannot remain the only part of these islands without a statutory commitment to end fuel poverty. As the Opposition, we are not here simply to oppose things or to be negative, as we were accused of being yesterday; we are here to offer solutions and to support the Executive to do better for the people we all represent. Every cold home, every child living in damp conditions and every pensioner who is afraid to turn on the heating represents a direct failure of policy and delivery. Let us change that and make warmth a right, not a privilege.

1,176 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:23 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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