![\"Stormont](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/7dc8bfda-55ce-4c7e-8e36-6ce0e78bf659.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIt was part of a \u00a32.5m bill for heating costs over the past five years.<\/p>\n
The figures were revealed by the Finance Minister after an Assembly question from SDLP MLA Mark H Durkan.<\/p>\n
John O\u2019Dowd revealed that in the 12 months to April this year, \u00a3416,858 was spent heating Stormont buildings.<\/p>\n
It will spark anger as thousands of pensioners had their winter fuel payments cut.<\/p>\n
The payment to about 250,000 pensioners in Northern Ireland was axed last year in a cost-saving measure by the Labour government.<\/p>\n
On Monday it emerged tens of thousands of pensioners here could have their payments restored after a government U-turn.<\/p>\n
The reversal means the majority of pensioners will get the payment of \u00a3200, for those under 80, and \u00a3300 for those over 80 for the upcoming winter.<\/p>\n
However, pensioners earning more than \u00a335,000 will not qualify for the payment.<\/p>\n
Last year, payment was limited to only those who claimed pension credit – meaning that the vast majority of pensioners in Northern Ireland and in Britain were left to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n
In his answer, Mr O\u2019Dowd outlined that for the 2020\/2021 financial year some \u00a3361,107 was spent on heating at the Stormont estate, almost doubling to \u00a3698,703 the following year.<\/p>\n
In the 2022\/23 financial year, heating costing \u00a3717,128 and then \u00a3473,698 for 2023\/24.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Dowd also outlined moves by the government to make Stormont more energy efficient.<\/p>\n
This includes the upgrade of 500 external lights on the estate grounds to LED and a procurement is underway to use 400kVA of solar panels by 2027.<\/p>\n
The three large gas boilers which supply heat to Castle Buildings were also upgraded to high efficiency units.<\/p>\n
\u201cA refurbishment project is ongoing that will include the replacement of the roof at Block B with enhanced insulation to meet net zero standards,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Dowd added: \u201cWork has also been initiated to investigate and develop options to upgrade both the Castle Buildings exterior \u2018envelope\u2019 and systems, to move to net zero standards.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Stormont Buildings<\/p>\n
News Catch Up – Tuesday 10th June<\/p>\n
\u201cMy department plans to commence the procurement of a carbon baselining exercise in 2025\/26, for the retained Office Estate, including our buildings on the Stormont Estate. This will help inform and enable additional efficiency projects with a view to further reducing energy usage and de-carbonising the Office Estate.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the longer term, my department has been supporting Department for Economy (DfE) in a pilot project to investigate the potential future application of shallow geothermal technology to provide sustainable low carbon renewable heating and cooling systems.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is hoped that this will inform the potential for a future geothermal heat network to replace fossil fuel heating systems at some buildings on the Stormont Estate, as well as helping to reduce and stabilise our energy costs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was part of a \u00a32.5m bill for heating costs over the past five years. The figures were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[8819,30996,71772,71773,71771,1144,925,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-172853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-amy-cochrane","9":"tag-department-for-the-economy","10":"tag-department-of-finance-dof","11":"tag-john-odowd","12":"tag-mark-h-durkan","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-sdlp","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114658915535401979","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}