Energy payments: Rishi Sunak promises NI £600 update shortly

Households in Northern Ireland will receive their £600 energy support payment this winter, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has insisted.

His comment comes after Alliance Party leader Naomi Long said energy firms had suggested it could take until June for all households to receive the payment.

Mr Sunak did not say when the discount would be applied to bills but said an announcement would come "very shortly".

He was speaking during his first visit to Northern Ireland since becoming PM.

There has been continued uncertainty about a due date the energy support payments in Northern Ireland, the first of which was announced in May.

A £400 payment was initially promised by the UK government for all households to help them to deal with rising prices for gas and electricity.

A further £200 payment was announced last month because of the proportion of homes in Northern Ireland that use home heating oil.

Rishi Sunak is promising an update is imminent on the energy payment for Northern Ireland households

People in Great Britain started benefitting from the support in October.

But last month the UK government said households in Northern Ireland would have to wait until after Christmas to receive the help.

Speaking on Friday morning, Mr Sunak said: "Everyone in Northern Ireland will receive £600.

"That's more than everyone else in Great Britain because we recognise that many people in Northern Ireland are reliant on heating oil.

"That money will be delivered this winter."

'People need energy money now'

But Ms Long said energy firms had suggested that the UK government's plan to allow people to "cash out" the support they were entitled to would mean the rollout would take much longer than planned.

"[Energy companies] have said they could start to deliver it in January but realistically it would still be being rolled out in June," she said.

"It's a shocking admission of the lack of preparation that's gone in to any scheme and it leaves a major gap that I think needs to be filled in terms of crisis payments to get people through the winter.

"Frankly having more money for energy in June isn't really what people need - they need it now when there's snow and frost on the ground."

Rishi Sunak visited the Harland and Wolff shipyard on Friday morning

Ms Long said Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris had "pushed back hard" against that suggestion when she raised it with him on Thursday.

"He felt that wasn't the case, that it would be done more quickly," she said.

"But irrespective, we're probably talking at least three to four months until the entire package has been delivered.

"For a lot of people that is going to leave them in a really difficult situation, given that they were told it would be in their account by the end of November at one stage.

"A lot of people have spent money on the strength of thinking that was going to come and it hasn't."

'Could be a real mess'

Asked why the energy payment scheme was so taking so long to resolve, Mr Sunak said the delay demonstrated why it was important to have devolved government at Stormont in place.

"This is one of the things where this is why we need to have an executive back up and running, to deliver on these types of challenges for people," he said.

"But we are committed to doing it and it will be done this winter."

The big problem with the £600 energy support scheme is that it is bogged down in logistics.

It's straightforward when it comes to getting the money out to people who pay their electricity bill by direct debit.

But the difficulty seems to be finding a way to provide the financial help to those people who use pre-paid meters.

The government does not want to open a scheme that gets money to some people but not to others.

Other options are being considered.

It would not be a surprise if we see a voucher-style scheme, similar to the High Street Voucher that was rolled out by Stormont during the Covid pandemic.

Gordon Lyons of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) said he was worried the scheme would be "far more complex than the government thinks it is".

"It could be a real mess - Naomi Long could be right," he said.

"My fear is that this actually could take months and months before something like this can be delivered and people need support now."

Sinn Féin MP John Finucane said people in Northern Ireland would have had the £600 "in our pockets already had there been an executive in place".

"As temperatures plummet, as the cost of living gets worse on a weekly basis, we need certainty now from the British government on when we are going to get that payment."

All smiles for PM's first visit

On Thursday night Mr Sunak met the leaders of Stormont's five main parties.

Political leaders said their meetings with Mr Sunak focused on restoring power-sharing, the stalled energy payment scheme and the nurses' strike.

Rishi Sunak met politicians from the five main Stormont parties on Thursday night

The prime minister continued his first visit to Northern Ireland on Friday by visiting the Harland and Wolff shipyard to promote what Downing Street described as the return of naval shipbuilding to Belfast.

A consortium, including Belfast's Harland and Wolff, was chosen for a £1.6bn Ministry of Defence contract to build three new Royal Navy ships.

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