Dáil debates

Thursday, 17 February 2022

National Retrofitting Scheme: Statements

 

3:10 pm

Photo of Réada CroninRéada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the changes regarding the SEAI, getting rid of the no second chance rule, and minor works on attic and cavity walls. Unfortunately, this is a plan that could have done so much good and it is actually just more of the same old thing. I acknowledge that it will reduce carbon emissions, but for whom will it reduce them? The retrofitting scheme as planned is a bit like the SSIA scheme of old, where the more one has, the more one will be able to make out of this scheme.

If you can put your hands on €25,000, you will be able to get an extra €25,000 in grants. If you cannot, the Government recommends you take on more debt. In that sense the scheme is truly a transfer of wealth geared at the governing parties' voter base, people of means, while people who are barely getting by are effectively passed by. This is particularly so in the case of people who are renting and already paying heart attack-inducing rents, often for properties that are damp, cold, draughty or mouldy. An Teachta Leddin mentioned mould in his contribution. In my constituency office in north Kildare we are experts on mould. We see so much of it in photographs from homes on which taxpayers are lashing out money in the housing assistance payment, HAP, to landlords who, in theory, are supposed to rent decent properties but, in practice, do anything but. That is another transfer of wealth. There is no incentive in this scheme for landlords to do the decent thing by their renters. As my colleague, an Teachta O'Rourke, pointed out, the plan reheats the 2019 target of 500,000 deep retrofits and 400,000 heat pumps by 2030. Sinn Féin allocated €75 million more than the Government in our costed alternative budget to do just that. The Government's scheme directs a majority of publicly-funded supports to people with private means, just like in health, where fast access is decided according to what you can pay, not what you need. The retrofitting scheme is the same.

We need to retrofit the whole housing system. I could not get up to speak without mentioning the heartbroken mother in north Kildare whose children could not sleep last night. They were sleeping in a caravan and were terrified it would topple over and be blown away. They are desperate for a home but have nowhere else to go. The mother's little boy could not go to school today because he was up all night petrified that his mammy and the rest of his family would be blown away in the caravan. They could not sleep last night for raw fear. How does the Government sleep at night?

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