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LAST WEEK WE offered you a few tips about how to conserve electricity and gas amid announcements of energy price increases from almost all of the major providers in Ireland in recent weeks.
This week there was further bad news from Bord Gáis which announced an increase in residential electricity prices.
While our compilation of guidance and tips was as thorough as we could make it, it was by no means definitive and in the comments section and emails you had plenty of tips of your own.
So we thought we’d collect some of them here today for wider viewing and if you have any more then by all means let us and the readers know in the comments section below.
Paul wrote about keeping out the cold wind and reducing your bills:
Using draft excluders and quality heavy curtains around doors and windows helps a lot. Test by putting a tea light near your windows and doors and see how much it flickers, that’s crap construction and insulation standards there letting your heat out and the cold wind in. Couldn’t believe how expensive curtains were but the reduction in gas bills over a couple of winters easily paid for them.
Darragh Ó Bradáin said that when leaving the house there should only ever be three things left on:
If I leave the house, the only things left powered on are the fridge, freezer and UPC box. Leaving anything else on is a waste. My bills have always been low as a result!
On the ever important and divisive issue of the immersion, Emma Challacombe had this useful tip:
i leave immersion on, on the “sink” setting, this actually saves money (have experimented) as the only electricity being used is when it initially heats up, by leaving on the thermostat kicks in and it stays warm but does not heat any more, always have hot water and it never as to use as much power by heating from cold, have tried both ways and it definitely works out cheaper for me, i have token meter so have to watch every penny.
Speaking of the immersion, Susan had an interesting thought:
I leave the immersion on most of the time. Reason being is it cost more to heat it from cold than it does to keep it warm, cos when it reaches a certain temperature it turns its self of anyway. And after it drops below a certain temperature is starts heating again. I’ve found it cost less.
On lighting your home, Pani had this advice:
LED bulbs. Expensive to buy but brighter, longer lasting and lower wattage than energy savers. 6w replaces a 50w. 9w replaces 100w. Do the maths. It’s roughly 18 cents per kw per hour. After shopping around I spent 350e on led bulbs earlier this year. It took 70e off a 2 month 200e bill. Have the money back over 1 year.
Owen Stafford had a good round-up of some useful tips:
only boil the amount of water you need for a cup of tea or coffee or fill a flask of hot water for the day. fit draught excluders and pull curtains. plug your laptop through a plug in timer to switch from mains to battery. replace outside sensor lights with 10w led flood lights . use remote control sockets to power off tv and all sitting room appliances. why give your money away ?
On Damien Kelly’s problems with his flatmate “who has no concept of energy saving” our users had a few interesting ideas to correct the situation. Among them was Paula Nolan who said:
Offer to reorganise the energy bills so he pays, say, 75%, you 25%. Make sure you have your percentages worked out based on actual bills.
For the kitchen, Eve Daly emailed in this interesting idea for when you’re cooking:
Residual heat on a ring and in your pots and pans is a hugely under used resource and always have a lid on. With boiled eggs for example, just bring to boil, turn off ring and leave for 5 mins for a soft and 7 for hard. This is based on a gas hob, even less time needed on an electric hob.
Finally, Gaius Gracchus (not the real one, we assume) had a useful idea which is certainly food for thought:
I usually do a play for the missus instead of watching telly three evenings a week, or read her a story.
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What is never mentioned in the media is that Michael Martin and his party bankrupted this country with no growth for 10 years. Had to beg for money from the IMF. All because of their housing policy, etc I haven’t forgotten has any one else ?
@Jimmy Donovan: FG would have done exactly the same if they had been in government.
Their 2007 election manifesto was similar to FF except they also promised to scrap the introduction of eircodes
@Thomas Sheridan: They also wanted to reduce stamp duty which would’ve put more money in developers pockets. Same party different name
@Eddie Garvey: The dogs in the streets know FFG are one party. By calling it two, they get twice the jollies!
@Jimmy Donovan: I haven’t forgotten about Sf screaming across the dail that every type of spending should be increased because ‘the country is awash with money’…..we would have been in a way worse situation if that lot have have been in…..I haven’t forgotten about that any one else?
@John Paul: SF hasn’t spent one cent of government money in this country. Each man, woman, and child currently ows 43k per person. Interest on this is 14 million euros per day.
@Jimmy Donovan: have a read of this article from 2001 by Greg Palast. The interview & verified documents are from Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank.
If people think FF or FG or any other political party, in Ireland, have been running Ireland for the last 67-70 years, they’re sadly mistaken.
@Mr Inbetween: maybe read the linked article before stating “facts”
Ireland has not been an independent country since joining the EEC
@Jimmy Donovan: Public Sector greed also had a lot to do with the Government going bust back in the day.
What I would love to know is how such a huge gap between housing required and actual supply has been allowed to develop
We now have a census every 5 years & we have known since the 1990s that the population is going up.
Back in simpler times it would have somebody’s job to ensure enough housing was being built
Now we are tripping over ourselves with experts and reports, but nobody puts their hand up on such a fundamental issue.
And is if that’s not enough we learn that E 1 billion a year is now being spent on accommodation for asylum seekers
This is not a formula for a happy contented country
@Gerry Kelly: the gap is there because it is a controlled market, and those influencing control are interested in making the biggest profit possible from each unit (developers) aided by incompetent govt and govt who are completely competent but rigging the whole thing for their benefit (they or their close allies are in the property game)
@Eddie Garvey: 100% exactly what I’ve been saying for years. The public are being hoodwinked by a combination of the banks/government/media and developers for the last 10 years approx. The shortages of ‘to buy’ and more recently ‘to rent’ is by design and will end in disaster for Joe soaps nationwide
@Gerry Kelly: Building stopped completely in 2008 but the population kept growing.
Over 1 billion spent on asylum seekers last year.
More than half of new PPS numbers in Ireland were issued to people from outside the EU last year.
Non nationals account for 36% of those in long term Job Seekers Allowance. 90% rise from 2019.
Highest number of working visas for Australia issued to young Irish people in 2023 since the height of the crash in 2009. Never mind all the Irish going to work in Canada, UK, Dubai etc.
We are a small country on the western edge of Europe. We cannot take all these people whilst our own leave. This is population replacement before our very eyes.
6 murders in 6 weeks all involving foreign nationals.
Ireland doesn’t have a housing problem. Ireland has an immigration problem
@JagTune: Exactly right
@JagTune: very well said. Be ready to be called all sorts of names including racist just because you point the reality.
@Mr “JonnieBoy” Johnson: Do you really care if the race-baiters call you names?
@Housing Hunger Games: this is the same public that voted in Martin and Harris on a first count ,I wouldn’t put alot of stock in the brain power of the Irish voting public at the minute.
Fact is we have a massive problem,these people are not like the polish who all appeared at the start of the boom,they have no intention of working in factories or building sites,massive dole merchants and feck all else
Brown field sites could be brought into use overnight if the political will was there, we saw during covid how quickly things can be done with emergency legislation.
Didn’t they say that the last time and the time before that and the time before that.
all fine and well but will Lowry approve
@Gerry Ryan: depends on if he can sell a discounted property to his kids through a shelf company. Sorry, that was some Lowrey guy, I get confused sometimes
@Gerry Ryan: Depends if he has an interest in it, like the LIDL that was built during Covid when not one house was allowed to be built.
After engorging themselves with salary increases.
What about easing the co.councils ban on mobile a nd chalet type homes in large gardens in country? Remember the man Tipperary Council took to court for housing himself in one…on his own land He is not the only one. Recently the same to man who housed his relations in Limerick. Many could house a son or daughter in their instead of them paying huge rents,miles away from elderly parents
@Helena Camella Cummins: There is no land in this country that the state doesn’t own, read the constitution and he didn’t bother getting plannjng permission, the part that a lot like to forget. I mean that is the first thing to do before building anything.
Housing for all is nonsense. No country can house 8 billion people
So we’ll have a 5k fine with near zero enforcement. Given the money to be made in short term lets, this will just be seen as a cost/liability and ignored
This is just the same meaningless talking in circles around the issue of housing as always, while actually doing nothing to solve it.
The brass neck of these absolute muppets and the contempt that they show to the people of Ireland beggers belief. They now say that they need time to draft a plan to deal with the housing crisis and a response to it????
They are acting like they didn’t just spend 4 years in government supposedly addressing the exact same housing crisis????
But now they say that have to start from square one, and the people of Ireland are going to just swallow this rubbish all over again?
Nobody likes the idea of lazy people that don’t want to work ever, getting low cost social housing while milking the system, but we are beyond that as a nation.
Because families in which both people are working full-time cannot afford a place to live, those people need access to social housing now, but its not only them, young people are facing the prospect of being homeless or under threat of homelessness regardless of how hard they work to build a future for themselves, older people on pensions are also struggling to pay for accommodation, is this what we want our government to deliver to the people of the country, more excuses, grand plans that deliver nothing and meaningless soundbites?
There is only one answer to the housing crisis, building social housing now on a massive scale.
Same course of action that crashed the economy as that’s there only plan. Protect their business lobbyists friends that roll up every year that control the land banks
I would recommend more tax breaks for the buyers and keep tax breaks for the developers. What would I know, I’m not on a TDs salary and live in the real world.
“Housing for all plan”…heard that years ago…yaaaaaaaaawn.
Yet again our so called Government and opposition are so full of sh**.
Keep it simple – no short term letting without Planning Permission . Enforce it correctly with huge fines for owner and operators like Air B&B and Booking.com. – this means the sector will settle down and inflated prices all round will be more controlled!
FG is
FG
Stop talking and DO something radical, that does NOT mean cancel the RPZs, bring in much tighter controls so that our own citizens can afford to live properly.
have your say