Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to apologise. I have had a very busy morning and so I have not been able to engage until now. I heard the comments of the Chairman and Deputies Ó Cathasaigh and Ó Cuív. I fully back up what they said. I will be short because to avoid repetition. I welcome Mr. Deegan and thank him for his presentation. Many people are falling through the cracks here. They are mainly people who are not young anymore and whose housing is in a bad way. Deep retrofitting is out as far as I am concerned. Can we not go back to making sure that all the draughts in houses are eliminated and they have good doors and windows? If we want to get people an environmentally friendly burner for burning solid fuel, we should do that. The way this is moving at the moment, many of these people will never see anything done with their homes. That is a pity and a tragedy. We need to get this work done as quickly as possible. We need far more co-operation. I do not understand why everybody cannot work together on this. While the intentions are good and the SEAI does a lot of good work, we need to move on with this work because it is too slow.

I will cite a case in my county where two siblings are living together. One of them owns the house and the other is living in the house and on a social welfare work scheme. Despite providing proof through a signed letter confirming she was on that scheme, the SEAI is still not accepting their bona fides on this; I do not know why. This case has been going on for weeks and weeks. That is not to take from the good work being done by the SEAI, but the process is too slow. While retrofitting is fine for some houses, it is not practical for many others. Let us make the basic changes that need to be made, and give those people some comfort and care. We need to remember that many of the people we are dealing with are elderly.