{"id":235692,"date":"2025-07-03T21:03:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T21:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/235692\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T21:03:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T21:03:10","slug":"winter-fuel-lyons-says-86-of-ni-pensioners-to-be-eligible-for-payment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/235692\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter fuel: Lyons says 86% of NI pensioners to be eligible for payment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lyons told BBC Radio Ulster’s Evening Extra programme<\/a> that his officials have assessed that the change in policy will mean 288,000 pensioners are in line for the payment.<\/p>\n

“For comparison, across the UK as a whole about 80% of pensioners will retain [the payment], but it’s slightly higher in Northern Ireland because of our lower incomes,” he said. <\/p>\n

“This has been a mess from the start. The government have a lot to answer for on this. This has been handled horrifically by the government and has put a lot of worry and concern into the minds of our older people.” <\/p>\n

Lyons had secured \u00a317m from Stormont to provide a \u00a3100 one-off payment<\/a> for those affected by the cut last winter.<\/p>\n

He said the Labour government’s policy was misguided.<\/p>\n

“I said from the start this would not have saved the government a lot of money,” he said. <\/p>\n

“What we have seen is a number of pensioners reach out for help and realise they are eligible for pension credit, which is a passport for other benefits. So in that regard it’ll actually cost the government more.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lyons told BBC Radio Ulster’s Evening Extra programme that his officials have assessed that the change in policy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-235692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-northern-ireland","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114791330825838430","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235692","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=235692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}