Ms Catherine McGuigan:

I know about the great work Deputy O'Dowd has been involved with in County Louth, having worked there from the early stages of this issue in 2009, when we really did not know what future we were looking at regarding housing. I will call on my colleague Mr. Lynch, as the director of housing in Meath County Council, to speak about the overall budget for the housing adaptation grant but the difficulty is exactly as we say. Generally, a critical incident occurs and then a fast-track application must become priority one. It is rushed through and then priorities two and three, that is, the people who are trying to plan for aging, have to wait until they have a bad fall before something happens. That is the biggest difficulty with the grant. We should be planning for those needs. We are doing a lot of work with the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design on features that should be built into housing. These are often very simple things, like a downstairs wet-room, the removal of door saddles or proper door handles, which can make a house age-proof and can be preventative. I agree with Deputy O'Dowd that the jargon around the application forms has been a bit of a burden for people. There has also been an issue around waiting times for occupational therapists to sign off. The Department has looked at that but there has not been consistency. The Department has carried out a review of the design of the form in order that it can be more easily accessible for people who may have literacy issues. I agree that a more consistent pattern is needed. Our long-term goal is a situation in which we do not need to retrospectively fix houses because they all will be age-proofed. Maybe Mr. Lynch would like to give his perspective on the grant.