Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)

The Estimates contain many streams of funding. One of them helps fund housing aid for older people. The Minister will know, because I have discussed it with him privately, about the recent EU directive to prevent the subsidisation of carbon-consuming devices, namely gas or oil boilers. The change to the scheme this year has had an impact in the context of how it is implemented. In Dublin City Council, 65% of the grants last year for housing aid for older people were used for boiler replacements. I believe it was 30% for windows and doors and about 7% for rewiring. Those are the top three categories. If 65% of the fund is no longer available for boilers, I suggest that some money will go unspent. If that is an issue in one local authority it will be an issue across the Department's Estimates.

The SEAI needs to put a solution in place. If someone's boiler breaks, it needs to be replaced fairly quickly. There is an opportunity to replace it with a more environmentally friendly option. The difficulty is that the cost for a full retrofit is nearly €50,000. These people are often eligible for the better energy warmer homes scheme and are entitled to that full intervention but they would have to wait two or three years to get it. However, we have State solutions that are already available but we are not able to implement them quickly enough to prevent that person going ahead and just paying the €2,000 or €2,200 and getting a new gas boiler at their own expense, even though they really cannot afford it. There is a policy instrument that we need to examine. We also need to examine the Estimates because there will be a surplus in that fund this year if it cannot be used.