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THE NUMBER of households whose natural gas services were being disconnected rose by 357 per cent in 15 months, the Public Accounts Committee has been told.
Data from the Commission for Energy Regulation showed that 2,373 households had their services disconnected between April and June 2012, compared to 519 in the first quarter of 2011.
The number of disconnections almost doubled between the final quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012, when the number of disconnections rose from 840 to 1,717.
Energy commissioner Dermot Nolan said the rate of disconnections was worrying, but commented that the regulator believed about 35 per cent of gas disconnections were made as a result of a premises being vacated.
“Our sense is that some of the gas disconnections have increased because of the vacancy issue,” Nolan said.
The number of electricity disconnections for 2011, the last full year for which figures are available, stood at 14,200 – peaking in the third quarter when 5,000 disconnections were carried out.
2,960 disconnections were carried out in the second quarter of 2012, the last quarter for which figures were given.
Nolan said about 25 per cent of these connections were as a result of premises being vacated, and commented that while Airtricity previously had a higher disconnection rate than the other providers (Electric Ireland and Bord Gais Energy), it was no longer an “outlier” in this regard.
Nolan assured TDs that while his regulator could not rule out a further increase to consumer gas prices in 2013, this was “dependent on the price of gas” on the world’s markets.
He insisted that if the price of gas was to fall on these markets, consumers should see the benefit passed on.
“My honest best guess now is that there would be no change,” he told the committee.
I will assure you… We honestly try to keep prices as low as we possibly can.
Nolan added that the commission was looking into the prospect of full deregulation in the gas market, ending the arrangement where it directly regulates the price of Bord Gais services.
This is because Bord Gais is still seen as a “dominant player” in the market, with 70 per cent of all connections, Nolan explained.
Full deregulation would see the gas market come similar to the electricity market, where suppliers are free to set their own prices subject to minimum service criteria monitored by the Regulator itself.
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The people must be punished.
How dare they have heat we must obey the EU
If you don’t disconnect people who don’t pay their bill how do you get them to pay their bill?
It’s not the peoples fault the are forced into poverty,and are been pushed further down by our low life government who hit tgem most while them and their pals felf the money flow again
If they didn’t disconnect people who didn’t pay their bills what would stop other people who can pay their bills simply not paying?
Simple if the person can’t pay they make a list of their out goings,every penny accounted for then when it is looked at it could be decided if the person is financially in trouble or if a few simple cut backs sky tv 60e per month alone would be a big savings
Get the banks to pay smart arse they have all our money !
People are in arrears because of outrageous energy costs. People here are often giving out about politicians salaries – check out what staff are paid in the ESB and Bord Gais for some interesting reading.
I had oil heating and had to stop using it as it was ridiculous so I got a wood stove to heat the house and go with a chainsaw for sticks.
It’s not ideal but its all I can afford
Yes we must obey the EU! (In a hypnotic droaning tone of voice)
Lets all march in unison behind Enda Kenny as he leads us to the Capitol where the leader merkel resides! Don’t know what we’re going to do when we get there buy sure we’ll worry about that then….keep marching its the right thing to do!
behind Kim Jung Enda
Check out this video truth about what had happened our oil and look at how we could have benefitted from it , it is time to ditch the balls and chains we have around our neck and get a government that actually have our interests at heart ! PLEASE HAVE A LOOK
Check out this video on YouTube:
Prepay is the future
I can imagine the outrage when Bord Gais set themselves up to give financial advice to non payers.
There probably would be outrage but only by the ones who were trying to come across as worse than they really are the ones who were really in need would receive the necessary
If it was said no more disconnections and its ok to not pay your gas bill I would stop paying. Could use that money elsewhere (to pay other bills)
@vincent read the full lust of comments and then post not just the previous comment
Prepay simply hides the true stats of people who are living in poverty, u do not show up in any disconnection stats etc
I wonder did the elderly couple who froze to death in Dublin recently, have a prepaid system?
Agree
2013 and people dying of hypothermia because of being unable to pay for heating.
It should be illegal to disconnect gas or electricity.
If people can’t afford it or are addicts then surely it would be reasonable to take 5 or 10 euro a week out of their welfare payments to cover all their house hold bills.
Al K… In a lot of ways I agree with your comment but 5-10 wouldn’t cover the cost of heating alone, it’s just too expensive. Most people I know barely turn it on to save expense and then can’t get over how high the bill still is. Heating on our cold rainy damp island is now considered a luxury.
Sorry but who died from hypothermia because they were unable to pay for heating? If you’re talking about an incident in Drumalee in Dublin during the week, I’ll remind you that the reports said that the flat had electric heaters that hadn’t been switched on and the deceased hadn’t eaten and there was a lot of alcohol in their system. Don’t use a tragic death unrelated to this issue to add weight to your point.
Rather than simply paying for people’s heating we could supply those at risk with good thermal wear? My house is poorly insulated but the heating is never turned on during the day due to the cost of fuel. I wear a long-sleeve thermal vest, tee or shirt, thin pullover, and a wool pullover. I wear thick socks and thick trousers. If it is very cold I will also wear a wooly hat.
A low investment in suitable layered clothes for those who cannot afford home heating could make a significant difference to their comfort.
This is not an apology on behalf of the fuel suppliers or the govt. who tax those fuels excessively. We need to be pragmatic though, as the cost of these fuels will increase as supply decreases. What will we do when there is no more oil/gas (or it is simply too expensive to source) to heat our homes?
Great Marty but what about the damage a cold house can do to the actual house, my penny pinching friend done exactly what you said to do and ended up with cracked damp walls and roof and huge dr fee’s for the kids asthma and colds. I moderate my heating on certain times, house grand and kids never near as sick as my friends. Yes heating is too costly but it is a necessity, a lot of houses are now built with no real fires, remember that too!
Let me put it this way, if you were sitting at home and it was cold and your only way of heating your house was gas heating what would you do.If I was sitting at home and feeling the cold I would turn the heating on and worry about the bill later.
People always find money for drink and smokes.
@vincent I agree,carrickmines and dundrum are packed since before xmass
@Karolyn Maybe I missed the part where I said people should not use heating at all? I have our heating set to come on before my children come home. My point was that I use my heating sparingly due to the cost of fuel, and also pointed out a way to save some money.
I am wondering how will we heat our homes when the price of fuel goes even higher?
Vincent f. What a stupid comment. Like broad strokes when u paint #dumb
The only reason they are pushing prepay on people is so they don’t have to cut them off if they run into difficulties, and they avoid the bad press .
Good to know the 60+ staff in the Energy regulators office got their bonus last year.I believe they shared over 200+ between them.Well done for all the hard work.
Should have 200k euro between them.
If that’s true it makes me sick!
Did we all forget about the massaging, electronic state of the art computer chairs that cost 100s of thousands also? Was that ESB or GAS?
HOW ON EARTH CAN THE REGULATOR JUSTIFY ALL THE INCREASES?
Yes I am shouting. 24% increase just before winter. When do the profits stall or even decrease. It’s always an increase to save the profit margin
A damning indictment of our so called government and ‘regulator’, who lets not forget granted a rise of 8% to one supplier who was only looking for 7%. Meanwhile we are practically giving away our natural resources which could supply cheap heat and energy for generations.
Our republic is long gone, sold for 30 pieces of silver by cretinous politicians.
The “regulator” seems to as useful as a handbrake on a toilet seat and as detached from reality as our government.
I gladly got rid of the Gas, I went back to basics, Bills were just too much
The price of gas seems to just keep going up, and up and up while people’s incomes are finite and falling.
It’s hardly surprising they’re getting cut off!
Also, this winter hasn’t been as severe as others (so far) so perhaps people are taking chances on just dumping their heating?
Good point David. Thankfuly its been a mild enough winter. Had we ha d the winter of 3 years ago we would be reading a lot more stories about people being found dead huddled together.
Dear Angela
I guess you heard there has been a 375% increase in Irish people being cut off from the Russian gas you get a cut of. You must have heard that we now have soup kitchens because the Irish cannot feed themselves, even with horse meat.
But don’t worry, I have made sure the Irish will pay the property tax you wanted. Because I wrote a new law that will allow me take it from their pay or from their dole pay.
So you will still get the blood money to pay off your banker buddies.
With love from your admiring slave
Enda
So long as people who pay their bills don’t have to foot the Bill for the unpaid ones I’m happy. I’m not a charity box that grubby hands go into whenever there’s a shortage
You are already footing the bill.
There are people who can’t pay.
But their are people who won’t pay and feel that gas and electricity should be provided for free along with their food,drink,smokes and the house they live in,their car and lifestyle and their holidays and every other benefit they claim from the state.
Times are though but a lot of people had energy cut during the boom.
Some people just don’t want to pay for anything.
Their is pay as you go meters you can get when in difficulty.
I got one and they work out great.
Hsianloon give me some lunch money, I’m starving!!
You and I are already a compulsory charity box
Ciaran Clarke….. The amount if people I know on social with fancy decor houses, kids iPads, play station, big tvs in their bedrooms, family holidays and then a couple holiday. Unless you know these people u don’t think it happens, the more kids they have the more they have. Then of course there’s genuine people on the social in trouble and falling on hard times but I’m in a one person working household ( a public servant, shocker!) and we can’t afford most of the things my social welfare friends have. What’s going on?
Don’t you just ‘not’ love how they try to soften it, ‘my honest guess’, ‘our sense’ …. get to the point, you either know or do not know the facts. completely dodgy i.e. cannot answer it straight on.
And still this country will not countenance nuclear power (but have no problem buying it from our neighbours)…lets all shiver and scrub mildew off the walls together in quiet ,damp dickensian discomfort, let us remain uncompetitive and invest money in windfarms and fossil fuel burning power plants…let us pay more and more and still more for energy…Let us continue to be a consumer of oil yet berate America for their global activities that assure we have cheaper oil than if the oil producing countries set the price, let us go round and around in circles whilst of course keeping an eye on the “immersion” – because ALL of the above would be better than making our politicians and policy makers accountable, being mature and sorting out the price of energy and make a long term plan – and simply make our peace with the fact that we like to flip that switch and be warm, have hot water and lots of it…isn’t it the least we deserve after 800 years of oppression…!!
We don’t need nuclear power Peter. We are uniquely placed to harness renewable energies. And what makes you think nuclear=cheap? With the current regulator and cronyism we’ll pay through the nose until theres too many dead bodies for the government to ignore.
I just don’t think renewables can meet the demand – no other first world consumer economy has managed it. Does that mean we shouldn’t try ?- absolutely not – renewables must be explored and ethically are the answer. I think we need to be realistic about the potential for renewables to meet demand however. For sure, the economies of scale here would make nuclear power a financial challenge in the short term – long term, however I think it would work out cheaper…our electricity consumption is rising and it will keep rising. We need a constant and consistent source of electricity and we need to know that the cost of it will not rise exponentially and suddenly. I think there should be a mature debate about it…it may well not be cost effective…but I know in the US – it sure makes the power bill that falls on the mat alot smaller…I know we have different economies of scale though to be fair…but we should explore it.
I was offered to have my gas fiddled with for €100. This was from a friend of a friend, there was no way I’d let somebody I don’t know near my gas system.
Anyway my point being people like this are part of the reason the price is going up and up and I’d say Bord Gais also have a stupidly high mark up.
These people are ruthless and to top off they charge a re-connection fee. The Government once again is doing nothing.
The government are doing exactly what they plan on doing protect the corrupt elite and destroy the ordinary working man and women! We need to put a stop to this. They have gone mad on power and greed and destroying the people they ment to represent , people who are not affected to the point where they are facing poverty it is only a matter of time , we are being spun aload of lies and bull and unless we start realising that we can’t take what these politicians say as truth and start looking into what is going on a bit more we are ALL heading for a massive disaster.
“destroy the ordinary working man and women”
Why?
If ordinary people are not working then they are claiming benefits.
Who pays for these benefits then? Your “corrupt” “elite”? What possible benefit is it of to them to have the vast majority pf people poor and dependent on the state?
Wouldn’t it make a little more sense to them (if they even exist) to have a thriving economy from which they can benefit and who can help shoulder the burden of paying for those on welfare?
Your giant conspiracy theory doesn’t even start to make any sense whatsoever.
Conspiracy theory no just stating my opinion No conspiracy :) they are protecting the elite, we can all see that, they are destroying the ordinary citizen crippling us with eu debt and taxing us more and more ! No democracy in this country!
Oh and don’t forget selling off our natural resources for nothing ! Why are they doing this ? That all I want to know
And we can’t believe what politician tell us sure wasn’t it Gilmore or one of that shower said it was okay to lie to get elected therefore what’s to stop them lying to us when they are elected !
Because those resources are currently worthless to us. If we started from scratch, the cost of building up both the infrastructure and the technical expertise would be larger than the worth of the resources once extracted. Please stop over-simplifying. It’s not that I necessarily disagree with your general points, but you’re going those general points a disservice by making inaccurate and ineffective arguments.
We have an area of oil that covers 9 times the size of Ireland and has aprox 10 billion barrels of oil worth hundreds of billions, we had it that the government would own 50% of any oil or gas extracted we would receive at least 8% in royalties and the companies would be race at 50% the government has changed this and now the companies own 100% of all oil or gas extracted in Ireland they pay no royalties , profits are taxed at a min of 25% and at a max of 40% and 100% of costs can be written off against that tax bill te former director of statoil is on record saying that no country in the world gives as favourable terms to oil companies , now I know we don’t have the infrastructure in place to do this ourselves but why are we giving out natural resources away for nothing ! I am not pulling this out of thin air I have the facts look at Norway the keep their oil and the citizens benefit from it we give it away for nothing !
And don’t forget we have millions of acres of bog in this country…..oh wait the EU tell us we can’t use a vast amount of it because of the damage we’re doing. Ah well back to the drawing board…….. gas, yes we have that, no wait we gave it away too. No sorry we’ve nothing.
I got a gas meter, best thing ever, no more bills, it’s definitely the way to go.
This place is starting to copy some of the more vulture like aspects of American or UK capitalism where the only people with rights are company share holders and the rest of the population are cash cows to be milked to death….very disheartening to read some of the more base comments on this story by people who thing it’s morally r right to leave the energy poor in the cold while they are reaping massive profits for already wealthy shareholders…a small portion if this wealth should be redirected to help the most vulnerable members of the society that we live in…I also feel that we’re At a juncture in history where the current form of capitalism we practice needs to be adjusted to reflect new market and social conditions
People don’t just get cut off for nothing. You get two written notices, two phonecalls AND a Final Notice. If you refuse to engage with your supplier throughout that process then what do you expect. Payment Plans can be arranged, Level Pay (pay the same amount each month based on previous annual usage) or you can get a meter…free in most cases!! If you’re using more than you can afford then you need to cut back and save where you can….something people are not willing to do!! Nobody gets cut off easily or suddenly and I can guarantee you that! People in this country seriously need to stop feeling so entitled and pay their way!!!
Had my prepay metre installed today, have to say I’ve been switching on various appliances to see how much each costs. I’m a feckin eegit yes! But I know I’m going to be a lot more careful now that its not on tap. Prepay is the way forward and ill never have to worry about a warning letter comming through my door again.
To think in a first world country, in the 14th richest country in the world (apparently), in a country where modest houses that costed on average a quarter of a million euro during the boom that WE are installing prepay meters in our homes because we can’t afford the cost of energy bills- we need to have a seriously look at ourselves- the only way this state of affairs is in existence is due to Inefficiencies HERE – the Government cannot blame the high costs solely on the price of oil and gas! Wait until we pay our property taxes, water charges and whatever other levies will come into existence ..plus unjustifiably high energy bills…. It won’t be pretty .
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