Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein)
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562. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the estimated cost of extending the warmer home scheme to all social welfare recipients, persons earning less than €25,000 a year and persons earning less than €30,000 a year in tabular form. [25736/17]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The Better Energy Warmer Homes scheme is administered by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) on behalf of my Department. The scheme provides energy efficiency upgrades free of charge to people who meet the eligibility criteria. Typical measures available under the scheme include attic and cavity wall insulation, draught proofing, lagging jackets and low energy light bulbs.  To date the scheme has provided energy efficiency upgrades to 120,000 homes. The average capital cost to upgrade a home was €2,641 in 2016.

Since the scheme is 100% Exchequer funded it is designed to be available only to those in most need of Government assistance. To determine this with complete accuracy SEAI would need to know the condition of a person's home, including its energy efficiency level and heating system, that person's family circumstances and their household income level. However, it would not be practical or efficient for SEAI to perform this assessment for each applicant to the Warmer Homes scheme. Therefore eligibility for the scheme is determined through the use of proxy indicators, principally the National Fuel Allowance. These proxy indicators provide an acceptable approximation that allows SEAI to find and identify people in energy poverty without having to resort to a cumbersome, expensive and intrusive administrative regime.

Eligibility for the National Fuel Allowance is determined by the Department of Social Protection through use of a means tested income assessment. Everyone in receipt of a non-contributory state payment is accepted as satisfying the means test. In addition, if a person is on an employment support scheme or getting a Back to Education Allowance they are entitled to the Fuel Allowance. Any household with a combined weekly income of up to €100 above the maximum State Pension (Contributory) is also eligible for the Fuel Allowance.

In addition to the Fuel Allowance, anyone in receipt of the Family Income Supplement, Job Seekers Allowance for over six months (and with children under 7 years of age) or anyone in receipt of the One Parent Family Payment is also eligible for the Warmer Homes scheme. 378,000 low income households were paid the Fuel Allowance over the 2016-2017 winter season, there are currently 57,000 families with more than 127,000 children receiving family income supplement, circa 40,000 in receipt of the One Parent Family Payment and as of April 2017 there were 195,434 job seekers allowance claimants. However, it is likely that there is a considerable crossover of claimants to these schemes i.e. many of those in receipt of job seekers allowance may be living in a household that is also eligible for the Fuel Allowance.

These additional eligibility criteria were selected as there are health and wellbeing consequences to living in a cold and damp home and children can often be particularly vulnerable to these conditions. In addition, lone parent families suffer from a particularly high deprivation rate in Ireland. In the Government's Strategy to Combat Energy Poverty, I have committed to ensuring that the eligibility criteria for the Warmer Homes scheme remain consistent with the latest findings on deprivation in Ireland. This is consistent with the aim of ensuring that the limited resources available to the scheme are targeted at those in most need.

Regarding a potential expansion of the scheme, statistical information available from the Department of Social Protection suggests that around 1.4 million people are in receipt of a weekly social welfare payment. According to statistics obtained from the Revenue Commissioners on gross income levels in 2014 (the latest period for which statistics are available), there were 1,019,631 persons with a gross income of less than €25,000 in that year. That figure rises to 1,206,851 when the income limit rises to €30,000.

There is no cost to extending the eligibility criteria to the Warmer Homes scheme since the scheme operates within a defined budget each year. However, expanding the eligibility criteria along the lines the Deputy suggests would mean that a much greater number of people would be eligible to apply to the scheme. This would likely lengthen waiting times for the scheme in general and would mean that those most in need could end up waiting much longer to receive a home upgrade than they would under the current arrangements. For this reason I do not propose extending the eligibility criteria so broadly.