Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There should not at this stage be houses with cavity walls that have not been insulated. Most or all of those houses should have been insulated at this stage. If not, we need to know about them. These houses were the easiest to retrofit and that work should now be completed. A number of community organisations have operated a rolling scheme over the past number of years to deal with those homes. As far as I can recall, over 300,000 houses have been completed at this stage.

The Deputy is correct that only limited retrofitting of houses with solid walls is possible. Some of them were done and some were not. Earlier this year, under the better energy and warmer homes schemes, I announced that houses in respect of which it was only possible to insulate the attic would be revisited with a view to their being externally or internally insulated free of charge. This will cost, on average, €20,000 per home, which is a substantial amount of money. Up to now, families whose attics were insulated were ineligible for a second round. Under the new measure, they are no longer deemed ineligible. The remaining houses in respect of which there was no retrofit of attics or otherwise because they had solid walls will also be externally or internally insulated.

The Deputy will be interested to know that we are currently finalising details of a pilot scheme for the approximately one in five homes, particularly in the midlands, whose only source of heating is solid fuel, mainly turf.