A regional manager for MABS – the Money Advice and Budgeting Service – has reported a 15 per cent rise in calls to the end of May.
Michelle O’Hara told RTÉ radio’s News at One that the cost of living was “just crippling people”.
The three main areas of concern for people were personal debt; mortgages and the fear of being disconnected for non-payment of bills. The space between what people earned and what they had to pay out was narrowing, she added.
People were not managing to make their budgets stretch the week or the month and the challenge now was that costs were creeping up every week, she warned. In some cases people were considering filling their car with fuel in the morning and then finding that evening that the cost had increased.
The major worry for people was that costs were going to increase more before the winter, said Ms O’Hara. The traditional trigger points were back to school and prior to Christmas, May was not a traditional time, she said. People were really worried about the challenges they were going to face in the winter months.
The service was seeing many returning clients who required additional help, they were also seeing new clients, people who were working, but for the first time were finding it difficult to make ends meet and needed the help of MABS.
“Their income is just not meeting their expenditure.”
People were employing energy saving habits, but the feeling was that they were not enough to meet bills.
