Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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429. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if his attention has been drawn to the fact that Wexford County Council has suspended grants for housing aid for older people grant scheme; the reason for same; if it is a funding issue are there further funds available from his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22244/13]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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On 22 February 2013, I announced capital allocations to local authorities under the suite of Grants for Older People and People with a Disability amounting to €42.750 million. In allocating the available funding across all 34 city and county councils I did so in as transparent and as fair a way as possible. In framing the 2013 allocations, my Department wrote to each local authority requesting details of the numbers and value of grants where work had been approved to commence. Between them, local authorities reported contractual commitments in respect of approved grants totally €18 million. This year I allocated local authorities the full amount of their contractual commitments which, in the case of Wexford County Council, amounted to €43,480. The balance of the available funding was allocated on the basis of each authority’s share of the new applications on hand in January 2013. This brought Wexford County Council’s overall allocation to €1,210,764.

In order to deal with any acute or particular difficulty which might arise in the operation of the schemes over the course of the year I have set aside a small capital reserve. I recently approved supplementary allocations totalling €1.2 million for 13 local authorities. I will consider further applications from local authorities where similar difficulties have arisen. No such application has so far been received from Wexford County Council.