Debate contribution: Household Energy Costs

Debate contribution by Mr Gordon Lyons on 7 October 2025.

MLA

Mr Gordon Lyons

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

7 October 2025

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Household Energy Costs

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5165126

Read the official Assembly record

Text

No, but there are decisions to make. My principal concern is about the tenants to whom Mr Durkan referred. He talked about old Northern Ireland Housing Executive stock. Where do we put our resource? We should put it where it makes the most difference. Of course, we should set our standards as high as possible, but that comes at a cost. If there is a decision to be made, I would rather support those who are currently living in houses in which you can see mould and damp and the immediate health impacts of both. I think that the Member underestimated the savings. The savings are far higher when you construct homes to Passivhaus standards. I think that only £3 or £4 a week was estimated for those homes in north Belfast. However, the residents whom Mr Durkan mentioned are not found in new social homes, which are already built to a high standard. Could they be better? Yes. However, each time that you raise the standard a little higher, huge sums of money are needed that could be better invested in the Housing Executive stock to retrofit some of the older homes.

I am sorry?

On the street that he spoke of. I can take you to Housing Executive homes in my constituency that are exactly the same. Ms Armstrong talked about the houses that we will start this year. Are we better building the 1,000 homes that we are going to start — I think that that number will increase — to a relatively high standard, or do we build only 500 or 600 homes to a much higher standard? Those are the choices. When you sit where I have to sit day after day, those are the choices that you have to make. It is not as simple as saying, "Go ahead, get it done. Have a bit of vision. Show some bravery". It is about choices. It is about what we do with the money that we have.

We can do that, but doing so will come at a cost right now. You will be the first to criticise me when I do not meet my housing targets. Is it Alliance Party policy that everything should be built to Passivhaus standards? That is an interesting one, but a balance needs to be struck, because I am genuinely concerned about the people who are languishing on housing waiting lists or in temporary accommodation. The issues are complex, and Members on the other side of the House are often experts at making complex issues sound simple. People come here with plenty of platitudes and only a spoonful of substance. There are real decisions that need to be made. Frankly, we have to be honest about cost. The Member therefore accepts that we will have to have fewer social homes.

She says that she does not. I am sorry, but my social housing development programme budget could be trebled, yet the same issues would still be there. Are we going to build fewer houses to a higher standard? That is a perfectly legitimate argument, if the Member wants to make it. Alternatively, are we prepared to build homes to a slightly lower standard but be able to build more homes? That is the question in front of us. There is a middle way, however. I am not giving up on meeting those higher standards to achieve more energy efficiency — Members can see the work that we are doing — but my focus will be, first and foremost, on retrofitting homes that are absolutely appalling, in which people live in horrific conditions and spend huge amounts of money just to keep their home at a barely warm temperature. I struggle to support the Alliance Party motion, because it contains a contradiction. I strongly disagree with what has been said on the other side of the House. I agree with my colleague Pam Cameron about the targets in the Climate Change Act 2022. Yes, those targets were agreed by all Executive parties, but remember why that was the case. They were agreed in the face of even worse legislation from the Green Party that spooked Alliance, the SDLP and Sinn Féin into going against the advice of the Climate Change Committee (CCC). We were not prepared to accept that. Yes, a compromise was made at the time. Kellie Armstrong shakes her head, but the Assembly went against the CCC's advice at the time, and, as a result, we are now tied down to targets that are simply not achievable. Here is the thing: everybody knows that those targets are not achievable and that it will be impossible for us to meet them as they stand. I have been clear and will say in the Chamber that they need to be reconsidered. Do I believe that we need to move towards a new future? Do we want to proceed along the path to net zero? Absolutely.

I will give way in a second. My fear is that, by going at this speed along that path, it will come at people's expense. We will sacrifice people in order to meet targets. We will be more interested in getting as fast as we can down the road of achieving targets than we will be about looking after our population.

I assure the Member that what we do in Northern Ireland will make no difference whatever to the climate worldwide. We are responsible for such a tiny proportion of the world's emissions. Should we do our part? Yes. Should we harm ourselves in the process? Absolutely not. I am putting people first, but the policies that the Member advocates will do more damage to people across Northern Ireland.

I will do what I can to make sure that we support those who are in need. We will retrofit where we can. We want to have homes built to the highest standards, but I will not hurt people along the way.

996 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Jev’s structured answers

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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