Mr. Se?n Moynihan:

ALONE is an approved housing body as well. On the specific issue of access to that, I do not believe we have access to those grants. In fact, it is a different housing problem. As AHB capital acquisition schemes come out of the scheme from the State, they have actually halved the income. The Department from which we can get unit offs, usually after 20 to 30 years, gives us a higher payment, which gives us the ability, when a scheme is more than 25 years old, to keep renovating. In our case, what we have done with retrofitting is we have actually done a lot of it through philanthropic contributions, that is, through fundraising.

As for energy poverty, over the past two winters we have had to run an energy winter response. We had a national support line seven days a week, 12 hours a day. Through one of the Departments and contacting all the energy companies, we had been able to get access to vouchers and other things. There has been a huge increase in the number of people coming to us looking for that. It was never an intervention that we had to do prior to two years ago. Between last winter and the winter before, we are looking at €300,000 to €400,000 worth of interventions from ALONE, something that we had not previously needed to do. I am sure that, through the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and others, this has been replicated, although we welcome the energy credits that were there.

On retrofitting and energy poverty, we all know that older people generally live in older houses. The statistics show they have the lowest BER ratings. A bit like social protection, accessing grants can be complicated. Sometimes, someone is needed to support an older person to do that. People sometimes give up on the hassle. Therefore, you really need your own means in some ways to access them. We all know what a probate sale of a house looks like but sometimes people look at that as a person's wealth, but it is not. It is not an asset that can be used. People need somewhere to live.