Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Many of my colleagues have already spoken about the fact that some councils' best tenants, those who have been in houses the longest, are dealing with mould, the cold and an absolutely brutal circumstances. Like everyone else, I am sure the Minister of State has people coming to him saying that they have never looked for anything and they cannot get a window or door fixed. The biggest issue across the board is windows and doors. The Minister of State should talk to the housing department of Louth County Council. I can only say good things about the guys I deal with there, but I know they are robbing Peter to pay Paul. They do not have a decent budget to do what they need to do. This is almost hidden because we have such dysfunctional housing and rental sectors.

The one glimmer of hope was retrofitting. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think the target was 36,000 houses by 2030. Louth County Council has a stock of 4,200. It is probably even somewhat more at this stage. Initially, the target for Louth in 2021 was 60. This rose to 105 in 2022 and was the same in 2023. Louth County Council was able to get 205 houses retrofitted in 2023. Other councils probably did not have this level of capacity, but Louth County Council was able to get its business done. It got 424 houses in total done up to the end of last year. That is spectacular work. It got 205 houses done last year. Its target was 105. Its target this year is 140, which is far fewer. This tells me that we have a problem. If the Government is talking about reviewing the system, it needs to look at Louth County Council. The latter has the capacity to do a hell of a lot more. Its work involved dealing with some of the issues relating to windows and doors, but not all of them. The council will state that in previous years, 35% of the houses dealt with were those that needed the most work and 65% were those that needed a lower level of retrofitting. The problem is that because of the situation with money, the council can only operate at a rate of 15%. I could talk about voids and housing adaptation grants but I am out of time, and not for the first time.

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