Extra Energy & Irish Housing Crisis

Available for over a year

Extra Energy is the most complained about energy company in Britain. It's being investigated by Ofgem following a record number of complaints in the first quarter of this year. The latest figures from the Energy Ombudsman show it had complaints from customers at a rate of 192 per 100,000 customers between January and March this year. That's up 42% on the previous quarter. In contrast, SSE was the least complained about supplier, attracting only three complaints per 100,000 customers. Ben Jones is Extra Energy's Operations Manager is back to explain. The Republic of Ireland's economic success in the late 90s and early noughties was largely built on the construction sector, until the economy went bust. Ireland is slowly recovering, with 8% growth last year. But a housing crisis is putting the brakes on a recovery, with homelessness on the rise and many housing estates still half-built. We sent our reporter Louise Williams to Adamstown, Ireland's first planned town, where only a fraction of houses and services have been completed. Natural oils are now widely available under various forms of labelling and packaging. The success and popularity of these oils has encouraged thousands of new suppliers of essential oils and aromatherapy products to start up in the retail business to take advantage of the current consumer demand. Following the early success of specialist aromatherapy companies, supermarkets, cosmetic companies, high street retailers and home start-ups everywhere have all jumped on the bandwagon offering their own ranges of aromatherapy products. But they are not regulated and its hard for the consumer to know what is good - or even safe about the oils they buy.