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€23 million for Social Housing improvement works - Kelly

Environment Minister Alan Kelly 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.

€15 million is 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.

The Minister said:

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.

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 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.

For more information read the full press release here.