Eamon Ryan: poor take-up of green home grants

A much-publicised government initiative aimed at encouraging homeowners to make their homes more "green" has been labelled a failure after it emerged that there was an underspend of €30m in its €47m grant allocation for last year.

The figure was revealed by Green party energy minister Eamon Ryan in response to a recent Labour party Dáil question, and has prompted it to claim that the way the current Home Energy Savings Scheme (HESS) operates discourages take-up of the grants it offers.

The figures reveal that in 2008, a pilot version of the scheme was allocated a total of €5m but only €1.4m of this was actually spent.

Despite this underspend, the government allocated a further €47m to the scheme last year, with grants paid to some 18,000 homes totalling €16.25m. But this left an underspend of €30.7m last year, the Dáil reply shows.

Labour's Seanad spokes­man on energy Senator Michael McCarthy said the "huge underspend" means the scheme, which is administered by Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI), is not working.

"The minister obviously in allocating the funds expected a bigger number of applicants for the grants than has transpired," he said.

The reluctance of people to get themselves into debt during a recession, and the unwillingness of banks to lend the balance of the money needed to facilitate the works were potential factors in discouraging participation in the scheme, he said.

"If the minister wants to make the scheme succeed and to have more homes insulated and more jobs created for those who would do the insulation, he needs to consider relaxing the rules to allow for homeowners to apply for grants for attic insulation only, and perhaps to grant aid a higher percentage of the cost of the works."

However, a spokeswoman for Ryan rejected any suggestion that the scheme has been a failure.

Instead, she maintained that around €40m in funding had in fact been committed to over 40,000 home­- owners around the country since the scheme was established.

"The scheme allows homeowners six months from the date of grant approval to have the work undertaken, before payment of the grant. There would therefore be some applications from 2009 that are currently being pro­cessed," she said.

"Applications are being continually processed and granted at an increased rate of 1,300 per week at the beginning of this year.

"The majority of the monies allocated for the scheme last year (over €40m) have been committed, which shows the level of interest amongst householders. As a demand-led scheme, this is encouraging."