Councils may turn off Christmas lights nationwide this year - as a raft of new guidelines on how people should run their homes has been revealed.
A Government drive to tackle the energy crisis is calling on homeowners to:
Use appliances outside the energy ‘rush hours’ of five to seven in the evening
Turn off the lights in empty rooms
Reduce the thermostat by a couple of degrees
Run dishwashers and washing machines/dryers at night
Get boilers serviced and cleaned
It has emerged that Eamon Ryan has given local authorities the green light to “start to look at” turning off festive lights in a bid to cut energy costs this Christmas as electricity prices continue to go through the roof.
The Greens’ leader also hinted that State-owned buildings like schools and libraries could see the lights dimmed and the heat turned down this winter to save money on light and heat.
Mr Ryan was speaking ahead of heading into a meeting of Government leaders tonight to discuss the Coalition’s latest energy saving plans.
The Cabinet will on Wednesday sign off on new energy saving proposals and advice for households, businesses and the public service.
They will include a revamped ‘Reduce your use’ information campaign later this year which will remind people not to use washing machines, dryers and other heavy energy appliances during peak hours.
This follows the energy regulator last month calling on energy companies to increase tariffs during the energy ‘rush hours’ between 5pm and 7pm to discourage energy use at peak times.
It will also be recommended that you turn down the heating a little in your home, while public sector buildings will see the thermostats turned down a few degrees this winter.
Other cost and energy saving measures such as having your boiler serviced and cleaned and turning off the lights in empty rooms will also be encouraged.
Opposition TDs from the Rural Independents Group slammed Mr Ryan and his proposed policies, with a spokesman saying: “Ireland cannot survive with an Energy Minister who hates energy.”
Mr Ryan was asked by reporters today if the Christmas lights may have to be turned off this year to save the taxpayer money.
He said: “I think we’ll come back to that later in the year.
“I think that local authorities are starting to look at that, they’re starting to look at every measure, but we’re not being proscriptive down to that level yet.”
Mr Ryan also said that State-owned buildings like schools and libraries could see the lights dimmed and the heat turned down this winter to save money on light and heat.
He said: “When it comes to libraries, I think we have to be clever here, we don’t want to be shutting facilities that actually provide a really important social function in these difficult times.
The energy minister said that schools would not close down to save on energy, but they would have to find ways to reduce their bills.
Mr Ryan added: “I think we’re going to have to look at every single building and every single institution, we’re going to have to look at their energy bills and look at how they use energy because they’re going to be hit with higher gas and oil fire bills if that’s their heating system.
“But I don’t believe, again, it’s lessons from Covid, our children benefit from being in school, I think there’s certain areas where we’ll save, but no, we need our children in school and I think we’ll have to look at other measures within those school operations to try and save energy.”
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