Written answers

Wednesday, 30 November 2011

Department of Environment, Community and Local Government

Housing Grants

10:00 pm

Photo of Martin FerrisMartin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein)
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Question 38: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government the measures he will be undertaking over the winter period to ensure that those living in substandard housing with poor insulation will be protected from the cold. [37749/11]

Photo of Phil HoganPhil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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This year my Department is providing €203 million to support a number of measures aimed at improving the quality and standard of local authority social housing stock, ranging from large-scale regeneration and estate-wide improvement works to the retrofitting and refurbishment of individual vacant and occupied units. €31 million of this is being provided to local authorities to undertake necessary works aimed at improving the energy efficiency of older apartments and houses by reducing heat loss through the fabric of the building and the installation of high-efficiency condensing boilers. This retrofitting measure has, since its introduction in 2009, already seen significant improvement to the energy efficiency of some 3,000 social housing units. It is a matter for local authorities to select the properties to be upgraded and to determine the nature and the scale of the works to be undertaken in each case.

My Department also provides Exchequer funding, amounting to €63.6 million in 2011, to support a suite of improvement works and adaptations to privately owned properties to meet the accommodation needs of older people and people with a disability. Under the terms of the suite of Housing Adaptation Grants for Older People and People with a Disability, grants are available to assist households to have necessary repairs or improvement works carried out in order to facilitate the continued independent occupancy of their homes. The detailed administration of these schemes, including the assessment, approval and the specific level of funding to be directed to each of the various grant measures from within the allocations notified to them by my Department, is the responsibility of the relevant local authority.

My colleague, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, recently published the Affordable Energy Strategy aimed at meeting an important commitment in the Programme for Government. The Affordable Energy Strategy will be the framework for building upon the many measures already in place to protect households at risk from the effects of energy poverty, which include the thermal efficiency-based measures delivered through the Better Energy: Warmer Homes programme.

The overarching vision of the new strategy is to achieve a standard of living whereby households are able to afford all of their energy needs and where families live in a warm and comfortable home that enhances their quality of life and supports good health. Both the Better Energy: Warmer Homes and Better Energy: Homes schemes, which are aimed at improving the energy efficiency and comfort levels of homes, are administered by Sustainable Energy Authority Ireland (SEAI) and fall within the remit of the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.

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