Cold ‘could kill 1,200 elderly people’

UP to 1,200 elderly people could die over the next three months as an indirect result of the freezing conditions in their homes.

The claim has been made in soon-to-be published research by the Dublin Institute of Technology and the Institute of Public Health (IPH), which was detailed by Age Action Ireland yesterday.

According to the older persons’ advocacy group, during winter 2006-07 a total of 1,281 “excess deaths” — the amount above the rest-of-year average — were recorded throughout Ireland.