John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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522. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if there are schemes to provide central heating in local authority housing and if not, if funding will be made available for the installation of central heating in local authority housing; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48151/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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The management and maintenance of local authority housing stock, including heating systems and the achievement of energy efficiency, is a matter for each relevant local authority, and it is open to each authority to address maintenance or improvements to their housing stock from within their own resources.

My Department operates certain funding programmes to support local authorities in the development and improvement of social housing, including improving energy efficiency. Over the years 2004 to 2009, this included support for local authorities to carry out an extensive central heating upgrade programme in social housing, which saw the installation of central heating, and associated energy efficiency measures, in 27,750 such dwellings, at a cost to the exchequer of €140 million. My Department is not currently operating any programme to install heating systems in existing social houses.

Local authorities are currently undertaking an ambitious programme of insulation retrofitting, with the support of my Department, on the least energy efficient social homes. Funding of some €107 million has been provided from 2013 to end-2016 to improve energy efficiency and comfort levels in some 58,000 local authority homes, benefitting those at risk of fuel poverty and making a significant contribution to Ireland’s carbon emissions reduction targets and energy reduction targets for 2020.

The insulation retrofitting programme is being implemented in a number of phases: Phase 1 commenced in 2013 and is focused on providing attic/roof insulation and the less intrusive cavity wall insulation in all relevant properties while Phase 2 of the programme, which has been piloted in both Fingal and Westmeath County Councils, will focus on the external fabric upgrade of those social housing units with solid/hollow block wall construction. Heating upgrades will be considered in future phases of the Programme. In the meanwhile, if a local authority identifies a tenanted dwelling which requires a specific and urgent energy efficiency upgrade, especially in those dwellings which accommodate elderly people and people with disabilities, then a special case should be made to my Department to have these works funded.