An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-13
============================================================

Séamus McGrath (FF), Cork South-Central

The three housing grants administered by local authorities are very effective. They need to be reformed in general but specifically the older person's grant does, which the Taoiseach will be aware, allows for works such as roof repair, heating repairs, windows and doors and so on. There is a minimum age requirement of 66 years of age. There is discretion at local authority level to go below that age in hardship cases. We need to look at and formalise that. For example, someone who is 59 years of age on a long-term disability payment might need to get a roof repair carried out. It is not acceptable that is at the discretion of the local authority. The grants need to be formalised in this respect and we need to provide for people on such long-term payments so the age needs to be looked at in the grants.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-13