ABSTRACT
The previous chapter analysed cross-country levels of fuel poverty. However, it is thought beneficial to analyse the case of Ireland in more detail for a number of reasons, particularly because of its outlier status in the results. A large household survey has been developed and employed to assess the severity of fuel poverty in Ireland, an interesting country to examine for four key reasons. First, very little empirical research on fuel poverty exists in Ireland because of the lack of suitable data hitherto. Second, Ireland has been identified as a country marked by among the highest levels of housing deprivation, and among the least energy efficient dwellings in northern Europe (Chapter 4). Third, Ireland, like the UK, has among the highest levels of seasonal variations in mortality, leading many researchers to believe that the relatively poor thermal efficiency of the Irish housing stock is a major reason for these rates of mortality (Eng and Mercer, 1998). Fourth, Ireland’s spectacular economic success over the last decade has simultaneously improved the quality of the housing stock and placed a considerable burden on policy-makers to achieve various challenging environmental targets, most notably on emissions of greenhouse gases and acidification precursors. By delivering the first estimates of fuel poverty in Ireland and its evolution over time, this study assists policy-makers in assessing how much the alleviation of fuel poverty would make in bridging the gap between business-as-usual energy-related environmental emissions and emissions from an energy efficient domestic sector.
