Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the young people from the school in Glasnevin. Senator Garvey raised the case with such passion. She is a passionate and eloquent advocate for rural Ireland, as everybody saw on television last night. The case she is making is that people in very old houses, particularly stone dwellings, are often the people who need energy upgrades the most. They live in remote areas, are on low incomes or are older people, and they need their homes to be made warm. A primary function of any government is to keep old people warm in the winter. That is a basic thing. The Senator is absolutely right that we need to tackle this. The answer given is that the SEAI does not exclude their houses from grants. It does not do wall insulation but has a range of other supports. Those people should not be excluded. What the Senator said is that there is a disconnect between that advice and what is actually happening on the ground in County Clare, where contractors are saying there is nothing they can do for those people. I suggest that the Senator refer to my office one of those cases where the contractor said there was nothing they could do. I will go back to the SEAI and we will work through one of them to see what actually happens in practice. We have new guidelines for how to upgrade stone buildings and traditional housing. They are supposed to work in practice. If we can go through an actual example and see what is happening, perhaps we can learn from that.