Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The Government is committed on paper to a major programme of retrofitting of homes, which makes all the sense in the world from the point of view of the cost-of-living crisis, allowing people to significantly reduce their energy bills, and from the point of view of the climate crisis, allowing people to significantly reduce their energy usage. However, the reality on the ground is very different. I am dealing with a woman in her late 80s living in a council home in Tallaght who has single-glazed windows, as is very common still in council properties across South Dublin County Council. Not only that, she cannot shut her kitchen window. She is facing now into another winter of being unable to keep her home warm. She has been waiting 15 years for the council to deal with the windows. This is not about some big deep retrofit, which is really what should take place, but just to deal with the windows. We have multiple cases people with entirely inadequate windows, and the council is not dealing with them.

On retrofitting, the council plan between last year and this year was to do 363 homes by the end of this year out of a total housing stock of 10,000. This simply is not good enough. Will the funding be provided by central government to ensure that people like that woman and others in that position are able to access basic standards in getting their windows done and their homes retrofitted?

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