Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

If I may, I will deal with the warmer homes scheme first. We discussed it by way of questions in the Dáil just a couple of weeks ago. We have allocated €280 million to the scheme in the 2025 Estimate. That is €70 million more than in the previous year. The scheme is focused exclusively on low-income households. It is a free retrofit, and rightly so, to tackle energy poverty, to improve energy usage and to make homes warmer and more efficient. Last year, 7,743 upgrades were granted, and that was a 31% increase on the previous year. About 3,400, just short, have been provided in the first half of this year. That is about a 2% increase. It is slight but an increase nonetheless. The average cost per home in this regard is about €29,000, so it is significant, is needed and is really the biggest spending part of it. That focuses on those who need it most.

We are looking at the waiting times. That is presented from date of application to completion of works. I am not sure that is the right way to present it because if you make your application, you get processed, you are approved and you get your contractors. There are different stages. I am looking at that and I have said here in committee and certainly in the Dáil that we are looking at the grants in the round to see how we can make them more accessible. Our SPV grants have been very successful. We are looking at about 64,500 home energy upgrades, which included solar PV. It is extremely popular. It keeps costs down and uses renewable energy. Our solar resources have multiplied over a very short time, and people really respond to that. I am looking at the grants. That will be in the last quarter of this year. I am not necessarily increasing them and I am not saying they will increase. It is a matter of looking at how they are structured and how we can access them. My big piece of work on the warmer homes scheme is seeing how we can reduce the waiting times. There are strains on the resources to do this work, like many sectors have also, but we will do more on that.

The solar PV scheme for the medically vulnerable is targeted for the installation of PV panels for households who are registered on the life support category of the priority services register. It is not widely known that that scheme is available too. There were 137 systems installed in 2024. That is on top of the warmer homes scheme. We have done 142 to the first half of this year, so there has been a big increase in that.

There are lots of good things out there; we just have to make sure that people are aware of them. As I said, as regards that accessibility, particularly around the grant side for middle-income families, it is a question of whether we can break the grants down such that you would not have to do a whole deep retrofit. The warmer homes scheme is fully paid for by the State, and rightly so. I have not included the social housing retrofit programme because it is under local government. There is a midlands retrofit and just transition as part of that. That is administered by colleagues in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.