Mr. Robert Deegan:

The Senator's makes a good point about those people who are just above the threshold. We are concerned about them. There are a number of schemes that are tiered. For example, the warmer homes scheme is open to people on particular social protection schemes, including the working family payment.

That is a payment that would be for families that might not be earning as much as other families, as well as jobseeker's and other payments. It is not just for people who are on those other payments.

The better energy homes scheme is another scheme. It does not provide as high a percentage in terms of support, but it is a support that is available to families that might be able to contribute in some way to their income. As I said in response to Deputy Jack Chambers, one of the climate action plan targets is to ensure that we are targeting the right people. Any decision to increase the eligibility threshold by increasing the amount of income that somebody could earn could have the result that the worst off in society might have to wait longer. In any kind of budget constrained scheme we are trying to target those most in need. By stretching it to people on higher incomes, that would mean there is less to spend on those on the lowest incomes.

Senator Mulherin referred to the waiting list for the warmer homes scheme. She is correct that the waiting list is increasing. The reason is that the measures available under the scheme have been expanded and made deeper. Every person who is availing of the scheme now is getting deeper interventions that cost more money and also take longer to do. We also expanded the range of people eligible to apply for the scheme. We made the scheme more attractive and we opened it to more people. The impact of that is that demand has increased. There has been a significant increase in the budget. This year the warmer homes scheme has gone up to almost €40 million. It is about continuing to look at the way the scheme operates to see if we can tweak it and improve it in terms of who it is targeting and at the same time seek additional resources for it so we can tackle the waiting list.