Mr. Conor O'Donnell:

I applied in July 2023 to the SEAI and I have not received even an acknowledgment of my application. I have rung the authority on several occasions and been told I am on its books but that is it. The website changes daily. One person in Mayo has managed to get a grant, but they had to build their house and move into it and then they applied for the individual grant. They had to go through the rigmarole of getting BER tests, paying out for that and then waiting while they got a retrospective grant for their home, not under the DCB option because that does not exist. It is the same for all of us. We do not know what to do.

The other issue relates to small builders in Mayo and elsewhere in rural Ireland. I am sure it is the same for Clare and Donegal. They are not SEAI registered. There are SEAI-registered groups that do the one-stop shop but we are not allowed to avail of them. They are not available on the DCB grant scheme, so we are stuck with the DCB grant scheme version of SEAI grants. It is not there, effectively, and nobody is availing of it. It is not going to be made simple.