8 October 2025
SDLP Opposition Communities Spokesperson Mark H Durkan MLA has called for urgent action to tackle fuel poverty, improve energy efficiency and address the issue of damp, impacting households right across the North.
Speaking following an Assembly motion on reducing household energy costs, Mr Durkan said:
“The importance of a warm home cannot be overstated. For many, autumn is a season of comfort and cosy evenings but for a growing number of households across the North, it brings only fear: fear of colder weather, higher bills and impossible choices. This is not the opening line of a Dickens novel but the grim reality facing thousands of families in 2025. The problem hasn’t gone away, even if the term has fallen out of fashion.
“Over the last three years, 40,000 reports of damp have been made to the Housing Executive. Yet homes remain in shocking conditions. Westway in Creggan is one such area that comes to mind. Older stock which has been left to mould and decay because necessary insulation works have been delayed time and time again. Many of those I spoke with suffer from persistent coughs, COPD, asthma. That cannot be a coincidence.
“I’ve seen families with newborn babies placed in temporary accommodation so damp it’s unfit for anyone. And little action to make these properties fit for purpose. The Affordable Warmth Scheme is underfunded and overwhelmed. In 2023/24, just 24% of applicants received support, despite millions in funding being available through Barnett consequential. That’s simply unacceptable.
“We support a Just Transition, but it must not leave low-income families behind. That means a statutory fuel poverty target, a social energy tariff, and proper investment in retrofit programmes. Northern Ireland cannot remain the only part of these islands without a legal commitment to ending fuel poverty.
“Every cold home, every child living with damp, every pensioner afraid to turn on the heating these is a failure of policy and failure on delivery at the hands of the Executive. We need to work together to change that and make warmth a right, not a privilege.”