By Gerry Kelly
Last week the Executive gave another £7.5m to people in need to help them with household fuel bills.
This had the effect of increasing the number if people eligible for the £150 payment from 100,000 to 150,000.
In total the Executive has made £22.5million available for some of the poorest and most needy people in our society.
Home heating bills have rocketed over the last 18 months and although oil, gas and electricity prices have at last fallen back some they remain well above what many households can pay to properly heat their homes.
There are still far too many people in our society who are being forced to make the choice of ‘to eat or to heat’.
My party colleague Jennifer McCann MLA recently met an 84-year-old woman, a constituent, who sat in a local shopping centre day in day out because she couldn’t afford to put the heating on in her home during the day.
No one should have to leave their home in order to stay warm in this day and age but this has been the reality for many of our older people.
Sinn Féin lobbied hard in the Executive for the household fuel payments.
The original proposal from DSD minister Margaret Ritchie fell way short of what we believed could be done.
The DUP agreed with us, and 36,000 more pensioners were included in the fuel payment scheme announced before Christmas making 100,000 people in total eligible for the payment.
It was still Sinn Féin’s belief that yet more could be done.
We returned to the subject of fuel poverty in talks with the other parties who make up the Executive and argued that the scheme should be further extended.
We argued that although the initial sum of £15m would be a very practical way to enable the poor and the needy to heat their homes, particularly over the cold winter months that more could be done.
I welcome therefore the decision by the Executive to further extend the scheme to cover another 50,000 people.
This was a good result for our people and shows once again what can be achieved by the local administration if the other parties are prepared to put their shoulder to the wheel.
The current economic crisis facing the people of Ireland was caused by greed, fraud and corruption in the financial and banking sectors aided by the Irish government’s mismanagement of the unprecedented wealth created during the era of the Celtic Tiger.
They showered riches on their pals and cronies in the golden circle of the financial elite in tax breaks and billions of euros in huge bonuses.
This meant that many of the richest people in Irish life often paid little or nothing towards the cost of health, education and other frontline services.
As a result the government failed to tackle disadvantage, poverty, inequality and failed to build the infrastructure needed for the future stability of the Irish economy.
The Irish state is also as far away as ever from a universal health service.
This is obscene.
This government protects its wealthy friends while targeting the sick, the elderly and children.
It has failed the people. It has picked their pockets while mugging the lower and middle-income earners.
It is time for the fraudsters and white collar criminals to face due process and its is well past time for the Irish government to do its patriotic duty and go.
