While Barnardo’s Northern Ireland welcomes the consultation on the Fuel Poverty Strategy, we are disappointed that this strategy is being developed in the absence of an overarching Northern Ireland Anti-Poverty Strategy. The children, families, and individuals that struggle to pay for electricity, gas or oil, are the same people that cannot afford school uniforms, that need to use a food bank to put food on the table, or skip meals so that they can make ends meet.
Without an overarching Anti-Poverty Strategy, a Fuel Poverty Strategy is merely a sticking plaster over a problem that is deepening in severity and widening in its impact. Barnardo’s NI urges the Minister for Communities and officials within the Department for Communities to prioritise the development and publication of an Anti-Poverty Strategy for Northern Ireland.