Pensioners seeing phone bills double after Budget cuts

PENSIONERS are seeing their phone bills double after a variety of factors, including cuts to the telephone allowance, were introduced.

Campaigners say there has been a huge increase in charges as the first bills since the Budget arrive on doorsteps this month.

According to the Department of Social Protection, the telephone allowance was cut from €22.58 to €9.50 per month.

However, more than 270,000 Eircom customers will also see the company remove subsidies

‘Phone combats loneliness’

of €3.20 towards line rental, €1.52 towards calls and 79 cent towards handset rental costs.

The telephone allowance is part of the Household Benefits Scheme and is available to all people over 70. Others under 70 who have certain welfare payments or who live alone or with excepted persons can also be entitled to the allowance.

Last night, a 70-year-old man, who wishes to remain anonymous, contacted the Irish Daily Mail and revealed he had cancelled his landline because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to afford it.

He said: ‘I’ve worked all my life in the UK and Ireland but I am only on the statutory pension so I have to watch the pennies. The phone allowance was cut badly in the Budget so I ditched the landline in January.

‘With all these cuts that keep on coming for us, it just shows the Government doesn’t care about old people any more.’

Two sample bills supplied to the Irish Daily Mail by a 68-yearold pensioner based in Munster show his bimonthly telephone bill for February is more than double his December bill.

Advocacy group Age Action said it was receiving calls from worried pensioners all over the country reflecting the same experience.

The charity’s spokesman, Eamon Timmins, said it had discovered that the doubling of bills is ‘pretty much the case across the board’. The charity is now warning that elderly people will be left isolated if they have to cancel their telephone to cut costs.

Mr Timmins said: ‘The phone is the only connection with the outside world for many older people and particularly in a cold weather snap like this it’s vital

‘Government doesn’t care’

that they are connected with the outside world.

‘We are getting calls now from pensioners that are alarmed when they see bills dropping on their doorsteps and bills are effectively doubling.’ Currently, 397,000 people receive the phone allowance at an estimated cost of €47million.

Yesterday Fianna Fáil’s social protection spokesman Willie O’Dea said the reduction in the telephone allowance, together with other social protection cuts, would lead to older people across Ireland either dying from ‘fear or freezing’.

He added: ‘In rural areas the phone is used to combat loneliness, while in urban areas it’s important for security as well.

‘Some people might regard the phone as an extra, but it’s actually a vital tool of living.

‘And because of the pressures put on them by this Government, pensioners are having to choose between food, heat and the phone.’