Ms Ruth Buggie:

We do an a lot on that route within communities, raising awareness and, like the Senator, doing clinics on the grants available. We are also rolling out a series of talks in local libraries starting next month. We are trying to reach people in a lot of different ways. We do a lot of online training as well that is made available. Within our 800 communities we have direct contact with approximately 40,000 different people. They all have mammies and daddies, aunties and uncles, and so on, who might be suited for the warmer homes scheme. It does raise awareness in that way. Everywhere we go we are conscious that people are in different circumstances, so you talk about the range of different supports there. The warmer homes scheme obviously has a huge amount of interest because it is free. It is also making people aware that there are opportunities to help prevent future energy poverty. If those easy to treat measures like attics and cavities are in your home, the measures and supports are there now. You may in time hopefully become eligible for the warmer homes scheme, but you may not need it if you have taken those steps along the way. An awful lot of work is being done to reach as many households as we can and raise awareness about the programme. It is also about trying to manage that expectation on the waiting time. We would love to tell people to contact us today and they will get their house done tomorrow. However, the more we make people aware, the bigger the waiting list gets, and the more people get frustrated with how long they have to wait. We constantly have to balance both sides of that in terms of raising awareness for the most vulnerable, treating them and trying to increase capacity in the schemes as well.