Letters to the Editor: Older people are particularly vulnerable to energy poverty
'People aged 65 and over who live alone have the highest rate of income poverty in Ireland, 30% of whom had an income below the poverty line in 2025.' Stock picture
In response to rising energy costs, the Government has announced that the standard rate of fuel allowance will be paid for an additional four weeks in 2026.
However, fewer than three in 10 of all State pension recipients are eligible for fuel allowance.
Almost half of recipients of the mean-tested State pension do not qualify.
Older households are particularly vulnerable to energy poverty: People aged 65 and over who live alone have the highest rate of income poverty in Ireland, 30% of whom had an income below the poverty line in 2025.
Energy poverty can have significant health implications for older people.
Age Action calls for reform to the eligibility conditions for fuel allowance to better address energy poverty among older people.
I am writing to congratulate you for publishing the articles entitled ‘An Iranian woman’s war diary’.
The bravery of M, as she is called to protect her real identity, is so evident as she recounts her daily frightening struggle to come to terms with yet another assault on her daily life: “The devil came out of the sleeves of religious dictatorial governments, out of the sleeves of cursed America and Israel.”
You can almost hear the anguish in her voice as she cries for the weeping fathers of the Minab schoolgirls killed in a bombing in their school.
As a newspaper, you certainly have played a huge part in making “that unseen suffering visible”.
The report published on Tuesday by the children’s ombudsman highlights myriad problems with the care system.
There are currently almost 6,000 children in the care of the State, some of them highly vulnerable.
But, according to this report, many of them are at risk of further harm when taken into care.
Among the failings identified are a shortage of foster homes, growing reliance on private providers, and children who have been exposed to violence, drug abuse, and sexual exploitation.
I find the contents of this report to be utterly appalling.
The Government must step up to the plate in supporting and nurturing society’s most vulnerable.
Your editorial assessment of the US by the V-Dem Institute in Gothenburg University — ‘Irish Examiner view: Is the US no longer a democracy?’, March 23 — makes for shocking reading.
US democracy has had the habit of partially repealing itself once every 80 years or so.
First, it was the civil war, or “the war between the states”.
Next, it was a more protracted abolition, with 2m people joining the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, followed by the Charles Lindbergh flirtation with fascism during and after the Great Depression and through much of the 1930s.
Since 2016, it has been tiki torches at Charlottesville, chants of “Jews will not replace us”, venal advantage-seeking public officials, paramilitary police shooting protesters in the street, and an orange-faced strongman bending institutions to his will while inventing military crises abroad.
I don’t mean to sound complacent, and Mr Trump certainly needs to be retired, but all of the polling indicates that Americans have had enough of him, and they haven’t abolished elections yet.
Terry Prone’s column in the same edition of your paper provides a more relevant and acute analysis than the good Goths of the V-Dem Institute in Sweden.
Maybe Trump is just “a dose” and history will simply paint over his “Maga movement” as a transient act of vandalism.
Lindbergh will be wielding more influence in the US than Donald Trump after the mid-terms at this rate of going, and I have faith in the average American to land this burning plane and put the fire out.
The Irish Open is due to take place at Doonbeg Golf club in September. Donald Trump, the owner, has recently started an illegal war against Iran which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, including a US air force attack on a Minab primary school which killed more than 150 students.
Trump has also backed Israel’s recent war in Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of more than 18,000 Palestinian children.
Meanwhile, in the US, Trump’s masked ICE agents have recently shot dead totally innocent unarmed Americans. His demonisation of all immigrants and his absolute denial of climate change mark him out as a very dangerous and evil president, an enemy of international law and democracy.
In this context, anyone supporting the upcoming Irish Open should be ashamed of themselves.
It should be boycotted in every way possible.
