Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The affordable fuels strategy is at an advanced stage of preparation in the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. It will provide a way to deal with the issue more widely and generally. It will not be like in the past when there were income supports to free fuel schemes. It will also involve retrofitting households to help people have more energy efficient homes.

Significant moneys are going into the retrofit programme with thousands of homes becoming more energy efficient. This runs counter to having fuel schemes that do not deal with energy inefficiency. The whole question is the switch to more energy efficient homes, the best way to deal with fuel poverty. This programme will be accelerated over coming years.

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