Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I agree that energy costs and the price of fuel have been increasing. As a country, we are on the receiving end of the internationally set price of fuel. We are at the end of a very long pipeline from Russia. I have looked at the report from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and welcome it. In particular, I want to look at where the society focuses attention on what can be done to ease the burden on hard-pressed families in paying their fuel bills. The statement issued by the society states that with some basic investment some homes could become warmer, healthier and cheaper to run. I agree with this. It acknowledges that 250,000 homes have acquired retrofitting measures such as attic and cavity wall insulation, draught proofing and low energy lighting, but it points out that more needs to be done in retrofitting. I agree with this. That is why the Government has concentrated its focus on finding a long-term solution to the high cost of energy which people must bear.

The Government has prioritised scarce resources in the retrofitting of homes through the warmer homes scheme and local authorities. The warmer homes scheme recently retrofitted its 100,000th house and this year the Government's stimulus package included €50 million specifically for retrofitting local authority homes. Also this year the Government committed €18 million to the scheme which will support the delivery of energy efficiency measures to approximately 10,000 homes, resulting in energy savings worth approximately €1.8 million. This is part of the Government's overall affordable energy strategy which we launched in 2011 shortly after the Government was formed because we identified back then that the issues of energy efficiency and energy costs had to be dealt with on a sustainable basis in the period ahead.

The Deputy mentioned low income households specifically. It is fair to state every household in the country is affected by high energy costs and the price of fuel. Last year we decided to focus the affordable energy strategy on households identified as being in poverty, particularly households spending more than 20% of disposable income on energy. I appreciate that I am over time, but I have a list of the changes we have made in this regard and I am quite happy to go into them in much greater detail for the Deputy in the second part of my reply.

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