Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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May I ask the Minister about the energy poverty programmes? I see they are moving along around the 6,000 mark, and I know that much deeper retrofits are being done than used to be done, but has the Department commissioned any research to see where we are with the number of people who are eligible under the national fuel scheme, how many have been reached and what sorts of homes people who are in that very low-income category are in? It strikes me that we may need to target some measures at getting the lower levels of retrofit done on homes people on very low incomes are living in as well as doing the deeper work. Does the Department have that sort of research to see if we have over time reached a target group of families in those categories? Are many still to be reached, and should we be looking at measures that are targeted at low-income families or pensioners who are in particularly poor homes from an energy efficiency point of view?