Why will £100 heating oil payments not be paid until the summer?

It will be at least three months before a support package for some households which use home heating oil is distributed, the communities minister has said.

On Thursday, the executive pledged £19.2m to go along with £17m already set aside for the scheme from the government.

The scheme will see up to 340,000 lower-income households receiving a £100 payment to go towards their heating oil bills.

Communities Minister Gordon Lyons said the extra money would come from the executive budget.

"It will certainly be the summer at the earliest, it will take at least three months to be able to get this into place, which again speaks to the need for that immediate help to come from London for people across the UK," Lyons said.

"I want to be very up front with people in Northern Ireland in saying today I understand this is not enough, I understand that this will take time, but we have limited levers at our disposal, we're trying our best to get out what we can as soon as we can."

The scheme will apply to households with a combined income of £30,000 or less, or those on certain benefits including pension credit.

The payment will come in the form of a pre-paid voucher, with people asked to apply online.

The scheme will require a new law to be made, although this could be the most straightforward part of the process.

It is likely that so-called secondary legislation will be used which is much quicker than primary legislation which is used to create entirely new laws.

The broad power for the minister to provide financial support already exists in law.

Lyons will therefore only need to lay what is called a Statutory Rule to define the specific details of this scheme such as the amount to be paid and the eligibility rules.

That process could be done in week or less.

The scheme will involve people making an application via an online form and then receiving a prepaid card to be used with their oil supplier.

That means a website will need to be built and cards procured from a prepaid card company.

There is a recent precedent for both these tasks.

In 2021 Stormont provided a £100 prepaid card to every adult in Northern Ireland in an attempt to boost high street spending in the wake of the Covid pandemic lockdowns.

That was handled by a specialist company, Prepaid Financial Services, who organised the printing, distribution and activation of the cards.

The minister will need to run a procurement process for a provider.

That could be done within a few weeks if he chooses from an existing list of approved suppliers rather than running a full tender process.

During the last energy price crisis all households in Northern Ireland received a £600 grant from the government.

Most households got this money automatically via a bank transfer or redeemable vouchers.

However some households with non-standard electricity connections had to apply via a government portal.

This portal was managed by a UK government department.

Could it be reactivated for the oil grant?

It is understood officials are also considering how to help people who don't have online access.

This is likely to be the most tricky and time consuming part of the scheme.

A system will need to be created which can verify that applicants use oil heating, that they meet the benefits or income criteria and that only one card goes to each household.

The Department for Communities is hoping to automate this as much as possible.

For example the department should be able to easily match its list of benefits claimants to scheme applicants.

It will be more time consuming to check the eligibility of non-benefit applicants. Presumably those people will need to upload digital evidence like payslips or a P60.

It is understood the department will have access to customer lists of gas companies to make sure that people who don't use oil heating are not getting the grant.

There will have to be a period of testing the portal with dummy data before the system goes live to the public.

The price of home heating oil has soared due to the war between the US-Israel and Iran.

Almost two-thirds of homes (62.5%) in Northern Ireland use oil for heating - the highest proportion of the UK nations.

Lyons said more immediate relief for households and businesses could come from the UK government.

"Ultimately, if we're really serious about helping people here, we need to see our government at Westminster do what they can with the levers that they have, levers that are not open to us," he told Good Morning Ulster.

"We can do this simply and quickly by cutting fuel duty, by looking at tax and VAT -that is what can bring immediate relief to people.

"Instead we've been given a sum of money that doesn't go far enough."

On Thursday First Minister Michelle O'Neill said the executive had made the decision to fund the heating oil scheme while talks around agreeing a multi-year budget continued.