Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will give details of the number of social housing and private dwellings that would benefit from energy efficiency retrofitting to on a regional basis [8044/13]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Under section 58 of the Housing Act 1966, the management and maintenance of the local authority housing stock, including the compilation and funding of on-going maintenance programmes and pre-letting repairs , is a matter for individual housing authorities. The information requested with regard to the numbers of social houses which would benefit from energy retrofitting works is not available in my Department.

Under my Department’s Social Housing Investment Programme, local authorities are allocated funding each year in respect of a range of measures to improve the standard and overall quality of their social housing stock. The programme includes a retrofitting measure aimed at improving the energy efficiency of older apartments and houses by reducing heat loss through the fabric of the building. Over the past two years, the retrofitting measure focussed on improvement works to vacant houses with the objective of returning as many as possible of these dwellings to productive use and combating dereliction and associated anti-social behaviour. Over that period some €52.5 million was recouped to local authorities in respect of improvements carried out to 4,774 dwellings.

I am currently reviewing the terms of the retrofitting measure, in the context of the energy retrofitting work programme for 2013, with a view to possible changes to improve the effectiveness of the measure. I will be asking local authorities to target those older properties which may lack adequate insulation.

My Department does not collate information on energy performance of private dwellings.