Minister Kelly announces €23 million for social housing improvement works
Issued : Friday 5 September, 2014
The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Alan Kelly T.D., has today announced the allocation of €23 million capital funding to 31 city and county councils to undertake very important improvement works to social houses.
€8 million will be provided to local authorities for adaptations and extensions to social houses to meet needs of tenants with a disability or to address serious overcrowding.
Under the Social Housing Investment Programme, local authorities use suitable vacant stock to meet particular needs. However there are also situations where there is no option other than adapting or extending an existing dwelling.
The Minister has assessed the requirements for such works with each local authority and announced allocations per authority based on the level of need identified.
In announcing this €8 million allocation, the Minister stated: “While the local authority social housing stock provides homes to almost 130,000 families, as people age their needs change. Some people require adaptations and extensions to their homes in order to continue to live independently. I’m allocating €8m this year for these necessary adaptations and extensions and I’m confident that over 300 families will have an improvement to their quality of life as a result of this investment”.
The Minister also announced that he is allocating a further €15 million to be invested in upgrading the energy efficiency of local authority homes this year. This is part of a three year jobs stimulus programme that will see the energy efficiency of 25,000 of the poorest insulated local authority homes improved.
“I’m happy to be able to continue the programme of energy retrofitting of social houses. These will benefit from improved attic and wall insulation, with consequent improvements in the thermal efficiency of the homes and improved comfort levels all around.”
The energy retrofitting programme will also see lower energy bills to thousands of local authority tenants. It is also supporting hundreds of jobs in the green energy sector, in work which is labour intensive by its nature.
“As a result of the further €15 million for energy retrofitting works to social houses, I expect to see over 4,000 houses becoming warmer homes, with reduced fuel bills this winter.”
