Ms Louise Lennon:

I thank the Deputy for his question. As he said, if there were only one or two local authority houses then it would be lower down the pecking order. Also, Irish Rural Link finds that with older local authority stock, a lot of people had the opportunity to buy out their homes. If a person has bought his or her local authority house then he or she is not included in any retrofitting programmes. They have to go their own way. That adds cost if they are not entitled to fuel allowance. They are not entitled to the fully-funded energy scheme. SEAI figures show there are lower levels of retrofitting in many of the more rural counties.

Many of the local authority houses within that are still not ramping up the programme at the scale that they should be, especially if it is available. The lack of tradespeople and contractors is a big issue too.