Environmental Schemes
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East

I thank Deputy Boland for a really important question. She is right to highlight the fact that the SEAI underspent last year, even though it did more homes than it had ever done before. That is not a situation that we want. We want this money invested in permanent changes to reduce energy consumption in households and businesses to reduce their costs and reduce emissions. That is why, earlier on this year, I worked directly with the SEAI and instructed it to break down the grants to make them more accessible. We brought forward new windows and doors grants and we increased the fixed grant levels for attic and cavity wall insulation. We put a greater focus on supports for undertaking retrofit measures on an incremental basis as opposed to undertaking just one deep retrofit, the cost of which many households could not meet. A very purist approach was taken before. A retrofit had to cover everything. We have changed that to give people a pathway towards a full retrofit.
I see that Deputy O'Gorman has arrived. I listened to his interview on this issue on the radio earlier, when he said there had been no changes to SEAI grants over the course of the past year, which is not correct. It is therefore timely that he has arrived.
With regard to the take-up of grants, this year we have seen 88,000 applications. We have to watch the spend, however. I do not have the final year projections. Obviously, we will not see what has been expended yet. I know the SEAI is spending and investing more than ever. I expect an element of underspend this year. I do not know what that amount will be. It will be substantially less than last year. It is not something I welcome but I acknowledge the fact that we have brought in a whole suite of new schemes. With the support of Deputy Boland and of the Government over the coming weeks, I intend to seek additional supports. I am not referring to increased grant amounts but to additional things that we discussed here earlier, such as boiler replacements. Frankly, these are things that should have been done before. We are also looking at storage. That is what we are working through right now. We are watching the spend very carefully. I met with the SEAI again just last week. I meet with the authority regularly on this. Real progress is being made on the number of homes being retrofitted and that is to be welcomed but we need to make sure that the moneys raised are fully invested in retrofitting measures for households and businesses.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-17