Dr. Martina Cleary:

I will answer and try to remember all of them in order. On the first question around quantums, to be very clear, the scheme in County Clare did not open until July 2023. That was a full year after we were accepted into this scheme in June 2022. What happened on the ground was that we realised fairly quickly that there were houses that had gone through the rigorous core testing procedure to ensure the county was finally accepted. That was an incredibly tough and quite traumatic experience of two years before it was acknowledged. There were houses ready to go but when the Housing Agency actually came down onto the ground, it refused to give definitive answers as to whether those core tests would be accepted for the properties that had already been core tested. Then it introduced the term "quantums", and I asked directly what it meant by quantums. It said it would wait until 35 houses applied for the scheme and then it would send it to public tender or a tender for one of the engineering companies that had been appointed to its panel. That effectively introduced a three- or four-month wait period. We were waiting for a certain amount to get through.

The scheme itself has 22 questions and eight addendums. They had not rolled out any type of clinic to help particular elderly communities who did not have any digital resources. There were people who were ready to go, with their houses rotting and falling down, people who were already elderly and needed a decision. They were living through yet another winter, and the Housing Agency refused to process those applications based on its idea of a quantum. There is no mention of quantums whatsoever in the legislation, so I question that. Initially it was 35, and then it dropped to 25. Now, in Limerick, I have heard it is 20, and in Mayo I have heard it is 20. This is an arbitrary introduction of a new clause by the Housing Agency that is totally non-transparent. It effectively delays it.

We are at a stage now where it has core-tested, to my understanding, 22 houses, and has accepted three that were previously core-tested. It still has not given a decision on those houses that were core-tested. It has given no written confirmation. We have only been given verbal confirmation that the core testing will accepted. Those homes are still waiting for a decision. The quantum notion is being introduced as a way of further delaying.