Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman and appreciate him letting me come back in. Apologies, I had to attend another meeting.

Earlier I heard the figures relating to the warmer homes scheme. They stated that 3,200 homes had been delivered so far this year, 1,300 contractors were involved with 328 to join and there were 11,300 applications with 420 in progress. If my figures are incorrect, I ask for them to be corrected. There is a waiting time of 28 months with ten months for the survey delivery. Is there scope to improve those timeframes, particularly that ten-month delay? We are talking about people who are in dire need. Many of those houses have a low energy rating to begin with but they households also are on low income. How can that process be sped up?

My second question relates to the retrofitting. I have had a few queries where people are concerned that the basic retrofitting was not done to the correct standard a number of years ago. Does it automatically preclude them from the 80% grant if their house is not up to a certain specification? If the witnesses could answer those two questions, I would appreciate it.