Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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This is the transfer of unspent money from the national broadband to allow for additional expenditure on retrofit. There are three broad categories in the context of retrofit. There is the local authority grant scheme, which is 100% funding for people in local authority housing. As I understand it, that is set at €85 million for next year. There is the better energy, warmer homes scheme. It is entirely funded from the Exchequer. It is for people who are on a low income but own their home. For example, the house may have been purchased from a local authority or something like that and the person may be on a welfare payment. That has €109 million projected for next year and it will be greatly increased by these transfers. That will mean many more people who are not renting from a local authority but who are living on a welfare payment and are homeowners will be entitled to have their home upgraded next year.

The final category is those who are not living on a welfare payment but are homeowners. They come under the general retrofit scheme. The intention was that there would be approximately €100 million for that section. For that section, a new national retrofit scheme will be announced in January. Part of that will be a loan scheme so that people who wish to retrofit their home but do not have any capital or savings will be able to get a portion of it paid for through a grant and the remainder paid for through a low-interest loan with some kind of Government security behind it. The payments on the loan would be paid off through the savings as a result of increased energy efficiency.

Those three schemes come to approximately €300 million between them before we make these transfers into the fund for next year, and two thirds of that money is directed towards people on low incomes. It is very much focused on the people who need it most. The reason for focusing it towards people on low incomes is that they are the people who are in energy poverty, who have not had upgrades to their houses and who do not have double-glazed windows or whatever. Those are basically the people whom we need to target.