A North Belfast mum has spoken out against the drastic rise in heating bills after her family's monthly bill was more than doubled.
Emma Reid and her husband have five children and are facing a tough winter, after their energy supplier informed them their monthly gas bill was going to skyrocket.
"We got a letter out saying that our monthly direct debit was going from £180 to £420 from the start of October," she told Belfast Live.
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"Our concern is that we haven't had our heating on over the summer and that was obviously a reading given with the warmer temperatures recently.
"We are now panicking about what the next quarter is going to be, once we submit the next one when we have turned the heating on as it gets colder."
Emma and her family find themselves in a position that many more families are now being forced to confront, as the pressure on fuel prices continues.
"My kids are heavily into sports so they're needing to get showered every day," she said.
"It's just getting frightening that we could be looking at a direct debit of about £600 come Christmas time, that's more than a mortgage.
"I posted the bill up on Facebook because I was just so shocked, and everybody was saying we need to start taking a stand on this, we can't let this continue on.
"It's essential utilities, these aren't luxuries, having heating and hot water, big companies shouldn't be profiteering off it."
Emma told Belfast Live her family don't qualify for extra help, as both she and her husband work.
However, she said that families like her own are struggling because they're just above the threshold for help, and that when their bills are cleared, her husband basically has enough for petrol money for the month.
"I'm not even joking, it would nearly be more cost effective for us to go and buy a family gym membership, for everyone to go down and do something in there for an hour or two and then go and shower, it's crazy," she said.
"I was talking to my friend last night and we were saying we'll be sitting in a car to try and stay warm and we were sort of joking about it but we were also actually being quite serious.
"We're going to be really tight about putting heat on and things, I'm actually dreading to think about what we're going to be doing.
"I think our politicians really need to start looking at other countries where their utilities aren't about profit, that it nearly needs to be taken back.
"It's going to be catastrophic on families where there's going to be starvation, kids being neglected and so many families being at breaking point."
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