Rishi Sunak has insisted householders in Northern Ireland will receive stalled energy support payments before the winter ends as he promised an announcement “very soon”.
The Prime Minister gave the assurances on a visit to Belfast on Friday.
Households in the region are waiting on £600 to help pay energy bills amid the cost-of-living crisis.
That includes a £400 payment as part of a wider UK-wide support scheme and an additional £200 in recognition of Northern Ireland’s dependence on home heating oil.
While consumers in the rest of the UK have already begun to receive energy support payments, householders in Northern Ireland continue to wait, with the Government claiming the political impasse at Stormont is hampering efforts to get the money paid out.
People in Great Britain are receiving their payments in instalments, the last of which will be made in March.
Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has said the payments would already have been made in the region if a powersharing executive were in place.
He claims the lack of ministers at Stormont has made the roll out “very, very complicated”.
The DUP, which is blocking the formation of an executive as part of its protest over post-Brexit trading arrangements, has rejected that explanation for the delay and has accused the Government of using the cost-of-living payments as leverage to try to force the party back into powersharing.
On Friday, leader of the cross-community Alliance Party Naomi Long claimed it could be next June before energy companies have completed the roll-out of the payments.
It is envisaged that households will have an option to “cash out” the payments, rather than it being automatically taken off energy bills.
Mr Sunak was pressed on the issue as he visited Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast on Friday morning.
He highlighted that everyone in the region was already benefitting from the Government’s energy-price guarantee.
“That is worth around £900 of support for a typical family,” he added.
“That is already benefiting families in Northern Ireland over the winter. On top of that everyone in Northern Ireland is going to receive £600.
“That is more than everyone in Great Britain is receiving because the Government recognises that far more people in Northern Ireland are reliant on heating oil than they are elsewhere in the United Kingdom. That is why the extra payments are there.”
The Prime Minister added: “What I can say is we will be making an announcement very soon about how that is going to be delivered. But it will be delivered this winter. For many people it will be delivered faster than for others in Great Britain.
“We have been working on it, we want to get that support to people, we recognise it is important. It is a great example of why we do need the Executive back up and running.
“These are exactly the type of challenges that we shouldn’t be needing to deal with because they should be dealt with by an executive here. In the absence of that the Government has focused on it and the announcement will be made shortly.”
