Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am glad the Deputy welcomes this action. There are number of teams in operation and it is confusing but the SEAI can explain it. The local authorities are carrying out their own direct upgrades on their own tenants. They have €85 million for that this year which, as the Deputy said, is an enormous sum of money. Every local authority in Ireland has been allocated extra staff in order that they have the capacity to actually do the work, which was a fear.

Under the better energy warmer homes scheme, which we are talking about, money is provided to people who are homeowners but on very low incomes. They are often people who bought out their local authority homes. The last category comprises people who are not in either of those categories and who are getting this grant, which can be as little as €500 but up to €25,000.

On the SEAI and local authorities co-ordinating their response, I believe the Deputy is talking about where it would make more sense to do four houses in a block, particularly in a local authority area, rather than doing one and having it stand out from the others.

I will take the Deputy's advice to the SEAI when I next meet with that body. It has a sustainable energy communities initiative whereby it sits down with people on a particular street to discuss how all their homes can be done together in a way that brings everybody on board. There is some negotiation to be done in such cases because not everybody may be ready for the disruption involved in their home. I will discuss the Deputy's point with the SEAI. We are doing a large number of homes through those schemes. My expectation is that 27,000 homes will be completed, not counting the 2,500 direct builds that will be done by local authorities.

Up to 2018, the warmer homes scheme focused primarily on delivering shallow measures such as attic and cavity wall insulation. Many of the people the Deputy is talking about perhaps had a small job done and they now need to go further than that. He mentioned something that is very important, namely, indoor air quality and situations where condensation is coming down walls and leading to mould. There is a very high incidence rate of black mould in Irish households, which leads to a much higher incidence of asthma here than is the case across the European population. This measure is not just about energy, climate change and keeping people warm in their homes and bringing down their bills. It is also about improving their health, including their lung health.

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