Mr. Seán Moynihan:

Members, from their constituency experience, grasp what we are all trying to achieve. I take the points Deputy O'Dowd makes about the adaptation grant and the desirability of having centralised guidelines rather than administering the system differently everywhere. The process is very complex and difficult. We have staff members who go out and sit with older people, fill out the forms, bring in architects and do all the work for them but the forms are continually returned with requests for a bit more of this or that. There is no consistency nationwide in how it is administered and it is very hard to do. A huge amount of effort has gone into making County Louth an outlier and a leader among age-friendly cities and counties. In tandem with our colleagues in Age Action, Age Friendly Ireland and others, we are trying to make possible the implementation of the national positive aging strategy, which links all the Departments and creates a bias towards helping people to age at home. There has been a huge increase in the number of people who approach us because they have retired into privately-rented accommodation. As houses get sold up, we will have to come up with some solution to this or an awful lot of constituents could be in very bad nick and seeking housing in their 70s and 80s.