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FOR THE FOURTH year in a row, families are bracing for a winter of extortionate energy costs.
People who can least afford it will be the ones facing choices around switching off their radiators, wearing coats indoors, and deciding between heating or eating.
Children in one-parent households, elderly people, and people with disabilities or extra medical needs are those most exposed to this crisis, and will again face the most difficult situations this winter.
Yesterday’s Budget took a few welcome steps, but it still falls short of a coherent plan to eradicate energy poverty and decarbonise home heating.
Firstly, the positives. The Government has finally heeded civil society calls to expand the Fuel Allowance to include households receiving the Working Family Payment, recognising at last that many low-income and one-parent working families have been locked out of energy support despite real need.
Energy poverty groups have been calling for this for years and it will make a tangible difference. The Budget also increases the weekly Fuel Allowance by €5. This will help, but it doesn’t fully restore purchasing power – based on actual energy prices, a €9.50 increase would be required.
On investment in climate action, this year’s increase in social housing retrofitting from €90 million to €140 million is a step in the right direction, as is the additional €89 million for SEAI retrofitting programmes. This will see payback in warmer homes, lower bills and reduced emissions for years to come.
There is still a need for this social housing retrofitting to be locked-in on a multi-annual basis to allow local authorities to plan to decarbonise all public housing faster.
Energy poverty has three roots – inadequate incomes, high energy prices and inefficient homes that waste heat and money.
If all three are not tackled together, the problem is pushed around without solving it.
The result is what we have seen for three winters now: temporary energy credits that serve as a sticking plaster, record levels of arrears, and families living with damp, mould, and cold.
Many households on low pay, social protection or irregular work simply do not have enough left after rent and food to cover winter heating, even at “normal”, pre-crisis prices.
We were told that Budget 2026 would strengthen targeted supports but people on low incomes, people with disabilities and older people will not be feeling an income-bump from today’s announcements.
Putting in place an Energy Guarantee would ensure basic protections that should be guaranteed in a wealthy country like Ireland.
Irish households are at the mercy of a global gas crisis that they did not cause. Energy prices remain high by EU standards – the most recent statistics show Irish households paying the third highest prices for electricity and the 4th highest for gas of all EU countries.
Prices remain well above what many can bear.
Arrears are now at record levels and the situation is expected to worsen unless there is urgent government intervention.
Additionally, the accelerating growth in data centre expansion means that in 2023, data centres used 21% of metered electricity – more than all urban homes combined.
Households are now picking up this tab through higher network and capacity charges – this is neither efficient nor fair.
Finally, there are homes themselves. Nearly nine out of ten Irish homes are heated with fossil fuels. Too many of those homes are leaking heat, which is basically throwing money out the window.
Renters and social housing tenants feel this most acutely because they have the least control over their insulation levels.
On the face of it, Budget 2026 did little to address poor quality housing. What we need are interventions like multi-annual social housing retrofitting budgets which would allow councils to plan deep retrofits at scale and build in-house capacity to deliver faster and to better quality.
As we wave goodbye in Budget 2026 to one-off energy credits, the poverty which they alleviated has not disappeared.
The test for this Budget was simple: will fewer people be left afraid to turn their heating on?
Unfortunately there is little hope that the Budget decisions have moved that needle, despite some measures around the edges.
We already know what works: targeted income supports that meet actual energy needs, a plan to move investments away from subsidising fossil fuels and towards helping people switch to renewable heating, and targeted retrofitting programmes to upgrade the coldest homes first – especially for renters and social housing tenants who cannot control their own insulation or boiler.
Budget 2026 has tinkered at the fringes rather than showing real ambition to deliver resilient homes across the country. As a result, people most at risk of poverty and in poor quality housing will spend another winter paying to stand still.
Clare O’Connor is a programme coordinator for Friends of the Earth Ireland.
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