Maria Byrne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, for coming in to discuss this all-important issue. My question is to set out the criteria relating to the home energy grants. I know it is not his area, and I know he is covering for the Minister, Deputy Ryan, today. I mean no offence to him but I am a little disappointed because there were a couple of questions I wanted to put to the Minister that are very relevant to the criteria. A lady who contacted me is living in a housing estate and the house next door to her gets a 100% grant but she gets no grant because even though the foundations of her house were started in 2006, the house was not completed in 2006. One of the main questions I wanted to ask was around how the year of 2006 was arrived at. I know some date had to be picked, but there are many other people in a similar situation. People are living in an estate where some of the houses were completed in 2006 while others were not even though they were all started in 2006 and they do not qualify for the grant. The person I spoke to is on social welfare and is in receipt of illness benefit as they are not able to work. They would like to get their house retrofitted, but the fact is that they cannot have it done because they cannot afford it. If they were able to get the 100% grant, it would make life an awful lot easier for them.

I also had an older person contact me this morning. I know we are trying to phase out boilers and change over to heat pumps. However, they would have to change their whole heating system. There are a lot of issues that the Minister, if he was here, may have been able to address. I am sure the Minister of State will have the criteria that are set out and I look forward to hearing them because sometimes questions are sent in to the Department and the response received is a little lacking. I look forward to his detailed response, and we can take it from there.