Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all the students and I hope they enjoy their day in Leinster House.

I acknowledge that Longford County Council was allocated funding of nearly €1.5 million in 2023. However, I want to highlight that in 2023 we upped the number of houses that we retrofitted to 79. The Department mentioned in its statement that this work was done to a reletting standard. Should houses not be retrofitted to a housing standard, which we now have, when retrofitting? Many of these houses are between 30 and 50 years old and have no proper insulation. Bringing them up to standard involves the installation of proper insulation and new heating systems. There is no way such work can be done for €11,000, which means that funding is being taken out of already tight budgets. We, as a local authority, have a low rates base. Not every local authority should receive the same level of funding because different local authorities have different rate bases and different amounts of funding coming in. We have a stock of over 2,000 social houses to maintain so a significant proportion of our annual budget is used to maintain them. We do not have significant funds to reduce the number of voids at the rate that we have been asked to do, but we have done it by using resources that we do not have. We have already upped the rates and increased the local property tax so we are doing our bit. It is not a case of us going the other way and then looking for money. We are funding significant projects in the county with Government funding and putting up our share to get projects done in our county. We are doing what we have been asked to do by the housing committee. We need to be financially compensated for doing it and for doing an excellent job. On top of that, a significant amount of the human resources within the local authority are part of that as well. I ask that similar funding is put in place as was put in place in 2023 for 2024. In the short term, as everyone will know, November is budget month for local authorities. As budgets are being put together for 2025, I ask that a similar amount of money, or more, is put in place to allow us to continue with the projects we have in place.