Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Ceann Comhairle has said, the housing adaptation grants are a well-understood tool that many of us in our constituency offices or during our time in local authorities would have used to support people to stay in their homes and avoid adding to the requirement for more permanent residential supports. It is one of the more successful schemes that local authorities operate, in that it supports people to live independently.

ALONE and other agencies, however, have highlighted that several local authorities could not meet the needs of all their applicants in previous years. Many of them have significant waiting lists and budget overspends. In my area, for example, and Deputy O'Dowd will speak about his, Dublin City Council, DCC, has 203 applications on its waiting list, while Fingal County Council has 194 on its. These local authorities have already spent 99% of their annual budgets. Turning to South Dublin County Council, it has 95 applications on its waiting list and it has spent 70% of its budget. Nationwide, local authorities do not always keep waiting lists, but several have hundreds of people on unapproved application waiting lists. Many have closed their processes, including in counties Louth, Meath and Monaghan.

This is a scheme that works well. We understand that increased costs have occurred. The Department has a huge capital budget, and rightly so for Housing for All. A portion of this needs to be applied to local authorities to support them to ensure more people can avail of the scheme and that any delay is not because of financial reasons but because of the time needed to process the applications.

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