Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Independent) | Oireachtas source

A housing adaptation grant is for older people and people with disability. It is available from the local authorities for people who need to make changes to their homes to make them more suitable for those with a physical, sensory or intellectual disability or mental health difficulties.

Not a day passes when there is not a queue in my office of people looking for help to fill in the application form to see what is available. The biggest problem we have at the moment is the increase in construction costs and materials and the shortage of skills and labour is putting the cost of these upgrades and essential works beyond reach of most of the recipients of the grants’ approval. It is very hard at the moment to get value for money. As Minister of State herself said, it is nearly impossible to get people to give a hand even for small jobs.

Grants of up to €30,000 were available to assist people with a disability in carrying out necessary work to make a house more suitable for their needs. The grant is means-tested and an assessment needs to be carried out by an occupational therapist. The issue is value-for-money but trying to get an occupational therapist out to examine many of these houses in my local authority of County Louth is nearly impossible.

There are also significant waiting times for people getting grant approval and assistance is certainly needed for the retention of local authority homes to cater for the needs of older tenants, for those with a disability and for those people living in overcrowded conditions in local authority properties. The problem with the local authority properties is that it is all old stock and a very significant amount of work needs to be done on them.

As one of my colleagues said earlier, Ireland is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which places an onus on the signatories to ensure the equal right of all people with disabilities: “to live in the community, with choices equal to others” and “to have the opportunity to choose their place of residence and where and with whom they live on an equal basis with others [who] are not obliged to live in a particular living arrangement.”

The amount of money available for grants in 2022 is €81.25 million. That is made up of €65 million from Exchequer funding and €16.25 million from local authorities. That, to me, seems like a great amount of money but every time we contact our local authorities the first thing they say to me is that they have no money. Some €81 million seems a great deal of money to share among local authorities but I am pleading with the Minister of State for more money and I keep mentioning the phrase value-for-money.

The Disability Federation of Ireland says that the maximum amount payable has not changed in 12 years. There have been calls for the maximum level to be increased to €60,000. The maximum amount of yearly income up to €30,000 is eligible for 95% of the cost and the grant is equal to €30,000. Between an income of €30,000 to €35,000, 85% of the grant is payable, which is €25,000. An income of €35,000 to €40,000 gives an eligibility of 75% of the cost, which is €22,500. Some €40,000 to €50,000 of an income gives an eligibility of 50% of the cost which is €15,000 and an income of €50,000 to €60,000 gives an eligibility of 30% of the grant payment which is €9,000.

We in the Regional Group of Deputies are calling on the Government to ensure that grants are linked to the costs of the specific works as a percentage of costs and to allow discretion for people with disabilities to ensure that the grants meet the individual needs of the disabled person to live independently. We are also asking that the Government allocate additional resources to local authorities to manage these schemes, to provide the investment required for local authority housing stock and to increase the budget allocation to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. The Government should also ensure that the grant scheme can meet the demand and reflect the increase in construction costs. The upper limit grants should reflect the increase in the cost of construction. The development of cluster bungalow housing should be incentivised with closer services for older people. There should also be a review of the recently announced but yet unavailable retrofitting grants to reflect the significant rise in construction costs.

As I have said to the Minister of State, these schemes are great. The people who call to my constituency office who have been living in these houses for 30 to 40 years, or whatever it is, just to do not have any money. They are looking for a little bit of help. The difference created by even replacing the windows, the doors or of putting a heating system in, is second to none. The €81 million that has been allocated seems like a great deal of money but it is divided between local authorities. I am only talking about a small constituency in my area of Louth and Dundalk. What happens is that when one person sees what is available, they tell somebody else and all of a sudden everybody is coming in looking for it. But these are pensioners, most of whom have a yearly income of less than €30,000, and they are really looking for help. We in the Regional Group sat down, studied and have worked very hard in putting everything together and most of the incentives we are looking for are all down to common sense. I hope the Minister of State will engage with our good selves and other Deputies and I hope we will get support on this.

I ask the Minister to look at the money.

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