Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the Deputy that the vast majority of households experiencing fuel poverty do so because they are unable to keep their houses warm. As such, income supports are only part of the answer. In many cases, in fact, they are not even a big part of the answer. The best way to tackle fuel poverty in the long term is to improve the energy efficiency of houses through proper building and retrospective fitting of insulation. Initiatives like the warmer homes scheme operated by the SEAI under the aegis of the Department of my colleague, the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Denis Naughten, have a very valuable role to play in that context, as does funding from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government to improve the quality of existing local authority houses. I told the Deputy during conversations at the social welfare committee at the beginning of the year that I would inform myself on any changes I might make with regard to budget negotiations this year and am in the process of doing that. Part of that information was the report I was waiting on from Maynooth. There was no point creating the wheel when it was already there and the college was already reviewing fuel poverty. We are waiting for the final outlay from that. The report will feed into other information we have in the Department and prove valuable in our budgetary discussions and deliberations later in the year.

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