On Monday, householders in Northern Ireland were told when long-awaited government support to help pay for energy bills would be arriving.
The UK government confirmed people will start to receive a single, one-off payment of £600 from January.
The money, part of a UK-wide energy payment scheme, has been delayed in Northern Ireland but Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris said he was grateful ministers and energy suppliers had found a solution to "the complexity of NI's energy market".
The scheme is due to be rolled out fully by the end of March.
But while a timeframe is now in place, many questions still remain about how the scheme will be delivered.
What is the energy payment scheme?
The Energy Bills Support Scheme Northern Ireland is being delivered by the UK government, in the absence of a power-sharing executive at Stormont, to help with rising energy bills.
The scheme will combine two different payments.
Firstly, a £400 payment that was promised by the government to all households in the UK to help with rising energy bills.
Then, a second £200 payment, which was announced in November to address the high number of home heating oil users in Northern Ireland.
This payment is being given to all households regardless of whether they use oil.
Households in Great Britain have been receiving their money in monthly instalments since October
However, until now people in Northern Ireland did not know when their payments would be made.
Why has the energy payment scheme been delayed in Northern Ireland?
The government has said there are two reasons behind the delay.
Firstly, Northern Ireland has its own energy market with its own rules, regulated by the Utility Regulator, whereas energy prices are regulated in England, Scotland and Wales via the energy price cap.
An extra complication in the early roll-out of the scheme was the high proportion of Northern Ireland households - about two thirds - that use home heating oil compared to the rest of the UK.
As these customers are not billed via energy companies, and there is no central register of who uses oil, the government faced a problem of how to get people their support payments.
In the end, it decided to apply the £200 oil payments to all households regardless of how they heat their homes.
Secondly, the government has previously blamed the delay on the lack of a functioning Stormont executive - an argument the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) refutes.
There has been no power-sharing government in Northern Ireland since February when the DUP walked out of the executive in protest over the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Since May's assembly election, the party have refused to elect a speaker five times until their concerns over the protocol are addressed.
As the delay in the energy support payments continued, the DUP argued that the government was wrong to blame the hold up on the lack of a power-sharing government.
It pointed to financial interventions carried out by the Treasury during the Covid pandemic to help with furlough payments, while the party's former economy minister Gordon Lyons said the energy scheme was on a "UK-wide basis" and should be delivered directly by Westminster.
However, Sinn Féin's Conor Murphy, who held the finance minister role at the time, suggested that if an executive had been in place, the delay could have been ended with equivalent funding from London for the £400 discount being allocated by the Department of Finance and distributed into a scheme.
The other main Stormont parties - Alliance, Ulster Unionists and SDLP - also appealed for the restoration of a power-sharing executive to help push through support schemes during the cost-of-living crisis.
How will the energy payment scheme work?
Direct debit customers will see the £600 payment paid directly into their bank accounts from January.
But those who pay quarterly or use a pre-payment meter, representing about 500,000 people in Northern Ireland, will receive vouchers in the post.
These vouchers can be redeemed for cash or they can be paid into a bank account.
Further details of what ID will be required by those who will avail of vouchers will be set out soon, the government has said.
While the money is intended to help with rising energy costs, people will be able to use it however they want.
The scheme is universal, meaning those who pay a bill at a second home, such as a holiday home, will be paid twice.
However, caravans and mobile homes will not count towards a second payment.
When will people in NI get the money?
The government has said householders will start to receive payments in January, and they should be fully rolled out by the end of March.
This means that people in Northern Ireland will receive the full payment before households in Great Britain.
A legal qualifying date will be set for the scheme next month, meaning the electricity suppliers will become responsible for delivering the money and vouchers.
However, we are still waiting to hear definitive dates.
What about people renting?
Few details have been released about how the scheme will work for those who rent or in shared accommodation.
There is also little clarity around householders who pay utilities as part of their rent.
The government has also acknowledged that there are some people who may not be covered by the roll-out of the payment scheme. These include:
- residents of park homes
- some care home residents
- tenants in certain types of private and social rented homes
- homes supplied by private wires
- residents of caravans and houseboats on registered sites
- farmers living in domestic farmhouses without a domestic electricity connection
- households off the electricity grid
The government has said people living in these circumstances will still get the £600 payment via a separate process that has not been confirmed yet.
For more details, go to the government's information page on the payment scheme.
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Q&A: Your £600 energy payment scheme questions answered - BBC
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