Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would like to mention some of the targeted initiatives the Government has undertaken to promote increased energy efficiency in historic buildings, something which will become more and more important as the years go on. Every year the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht provides funding via the built heritage investment scheme for maintenance and minor repair works to historic buildings. Along with the historic structures fund, this year's funding for historic buildings came to over €4 million. This was used to fund 449 projects so that repairs could be carried out in order to protect buildings over the coming decades. In my area, Dún Laoghaire, this money will be very welcome as it will be used to fund work on a number of important buildings including churches in Killiney, Ballybrack, St. Joseph's parish church in Glasthule and Monkstown meeting house, as well as a number of private buildings where people have lived for a long time and need some assistance in order to weather the change - no pun intended - of climate change and its more extreme impacts.

Protecting our historic buildings from damage due to the more extreme and varying weather, such as very cold winters and hot summers and the impact that can have on buildings, is an important part of our overall national response. In the 2020 built heritage investment scheme, a pilot microgrant stream was included specifically to try to help the owners of smaller buildings who have perhaps not been able to access funds to increase the resilience of their buildings and historic structures to withstand the constant effects of climate change.

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