Departmental Schemes
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-10
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Michael Murphy (FG), Tipperary South

The warmer homes scheme is supposed to protect the most vulnerable households in our society, including older people, low-income families, people living alone and those wholly dependent on supports like the fuel allowance. Right now the scheme is failing them and it is about to get far worse. I will outline the current reality. On 4 November this year my office contacted the SEAI on behalf of a vulnerable client who applied for the warmer homes scheme in October 2024. Almost 14 months later she is still awaiting a survey or an allocation. The timelines are staggering. It is taking 14 months to get a survey, 26 months for works and another three months for post-works inspection. This is not a functioning scheme. We already have 20,000 homes on the waiting list. The Minister of State knows as well as I do that these are not discretionary upgrades. These are essential measures for people at risk of fuel poverty.
The critical point that I want to emphasise is that the number of people on the fuel allowance, the key qualifying criteria for the warmer homes scheme, is expanding dramatically. From next year those on the working family payment will be eligible. That is an additional 50,000 households, bringing the total number of fuel allowance recipients to more than 500,000. If nothing changes, the warmer homes scheme waiting list will surge even further because eligibility will expand faster than delivery capacity. This is not a projected problem; it is an inevitability. The SEAI currently has no action plan, no surge capacity, no backlog reduction strategy and no timeline for clearing the existing 20,000 cases. Money is not an issue but delivery is and telling people that we have increased funding is meaningless if funding does not translate into workers on roofs, contractors on the ground, insulation going into walls and people living in warmer homes.
When will a full, published action plan be produced to address the backlog of 20,000 homes? What contingency planning has been done for the additional 50,000 homes that will become eligible under the expanded fuel allowance scheme? Will the Government commit to a maximum six-month waiting time for a survey for any applicant on the fuel allowance? Will the Department intervene directly to ensure that the SEAI increases contractor and surveyor capacity immediately? We cannot keep telling vulnerable people to wait three winters for a warmer home. We cannot expand eligibility by 50,000 households while pretending the scheme can cope as it stands. This requires urgency, action and leadership now, not later.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:27+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-10