Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will start with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. I was fascinated to hear its representatives say there was 20% building inflation. I do not dispute that, but they might tell me how long ago it was that the €8,000 limit – that is certainly the limit in Galway – on the HAOP was set. Is the Department providing a 20% increase in funding for the HAOP every year? For many people, the HAOP is their first go at making the house solid – doing the doors, the windows, the faulty roofs and the other basic construction work – before getting down to work like insulating, installing heat pumps and so on. It is a quick scheme. Local authorities can respond quickly whereas it takes two years just to get an examination under the warmer homes scheme.

Let us concentrate on the HAOP for a minute. Many under-65s are in poor houses but are excluded from the HAOP. There is nowhere for them to go. Some of their houses are inherited and perhaps three generations old. In the countryside particularly, most people own their houses but there is a fair stock of substandard ones. Some of these people cared for elderly people all their lives and have minimal incomes. There is a means test, so the well-to-do cannot benefit. I would be interested in getting information on the cost per unit of a retrofit of a local authority house so that we could have some measure of how little can be done through the HAOP grant, which is the private householder’s first port of call, compared to what a full retrofit would cost the State. That might be a useful figure for fighting with the Minister for public expenditure.

It means I will go a little off beam, but I have another question. What arrangements are being made to make charging points available for residents of local authority estates, some of whom have driveways where they can park their cars while others do not? Charging points are a big money saver and energy saver and would encourage the use of electric cars in future.

Given that it will take the Department years to get through all of the retrofits, what is the policy on getting ahead of that and putting solar panels on local authority houses to cut their energy costs and save on their energy usage?

The Department of Social Protection expanded the fuel allowance in 2023. Its representatives might give us the exact figures, but the cost of relaxing the means test was slightly less than estimated by the end of the year. How much extra did it cost and how many additional recipients joined the free fuel scheme by virtue of the changes that were made? I ask this question because we are putting an idea to the Minister and she is favourably disposed towards it. The committee has been proposing this idea since we were formed. Instead of there being a cliff edge if someone is even €1 over the limit, there should be a half rate or a slide-off rate. We would not have people coming to us who were not getting a fuel allowance because they were €2 or €5 over, leaving them worse off than someone who was just €10 under. That is always a difference. The Minister expressed an interest in the idea. Could the Department give us a costing for a 50% rate if someone was €100 over the means threshold?

It was mentioned that the Department of Social Protection assesses savings at a proportionate rate. Its representatives might tell us what that rate is and how it works. If someone has savings, how quickly should he or she be writing them off? I would be interested in knowing what the Department views as proportionate.

Regarding the household benefits package, I am a little perplexed by one of the statements in this submission, but I may be reading it wrong. It reads "Last year, the weekly means threshold for those aged under 70 was ... increased from €120 to €200". I had believed that, if someone had reached pension age, had a dependent adult and was living in a house, there was no means test. I was filling out a form the other day and there did not seem to be any means test for the household benefits package.