‘To take money from the elderly heading into winter is absurd’

CHANGES to the eligibility criteria for the winter fuel payment scheme mean that thousands of local pensioners will be several hundred pounds worse off this winter.

The announcement came last Friday, when Communities Minister, Gordon Lyons, announced that Stormont would be taking London’s lead by tightening the rules regulating who is entitled to the no-catch grants.

Generally speaking, this means from this autumn, only those on pension credit or other means-tested benefits will get the annual payments, worth between £100 and £300. Many local people on a modest private pension, like Coolnagard man, Joe Lindsay, claim that losing the extra cash will ‘significantly impact’ their ability to afford basic necessities this winter.

“My wife and I got the payments last year, but, because of the changes, we’ll not be getting it this year,” began Joe, a retired chef of over 40 years.

“We are only a few pound over the threshold, but that’s the difference between qualifying and not.

“There is no grey area.”

In a statement made to the Assembly last week, Minister Lyons expressed regret over the Executive’s decision to ‘maintain parity with the rest of the UK’ by adopting the same, unrevised rules imposed by Westminster.

The minister added, however, that Stormont would have to spend at least £44m from the block grant to maintain universal entitlement, which would mean significant cuts to other public services.

If Stormont did decide to set different rules for the North, it would represent a rare deviation from Section 87 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which generally means that social security benefits here are identical to those in the rest of the UK.

‘Aren’t comfortable’

“We know people who have been thrust into a worse position than us by these changes,” said Joe Lindsay.

“But things certainly aren’t comfortable for us.

“After we pay our rates, rent, electric and heating, there is not a lot of money left for holidays. We haven’t gone away for a few years now, and we have to be careful about when we decide to go out for the night.

“Thankfully, because I was a chef all my working life, I can put together a decent meal with just a few ingredients.

“We eat well enough, but there aren’t too many steak dinners,” he said.

Joe said that politicians are ‘out-of-touch’ with the experience of the people their decisions are impacting.

“They aren’t at the coalface.

“Apparently, they have to make cuts somewhere, but to take money from pensioners heading into the winter is absurd.

“What about all the tax-evaders hiding their money in off-shore accounts? Wouldn’t it be better to try to recoup your money there? To me, it seems like pensioners are easy targets who can be taken from with the stroke of a pen. To go after people who actually have money, is more difficult. Quite honestly, I don’t even know if there is the political desire to do it,” said Joe.

“It is frustrating to have worked your whole life, contributed to society in your own way, paid your taxes and put money into a pension plan, only to reach retirement age to have all that money you saved taxed, and to be denied even the most modest state benefits. Again, the people at the top will do just fine, while the ordinary man and woman get screwed into the ground,” he concluded.