€30 MILLION  IS to be invested in making thousands of local authority homes around Ireland more energy efficient.

The announcement was made by the Minister for Housing and Planning, Jan O’Sullivan, TD, who said that the funding is part of a three-year jobs stimulus programme.

Under the programme, the energy efficiency of 25,000 of the poorest insulated local authority homes will be improved by 2015.

“This programme is delivering warmer homes and lower energy bills to thousands of local authority tenants,” said O’Sullivan,

She said that it is also supporting hundreds of jobs in the green energy sector, “with many community-based organisations delivering the works and providing valuable training and experience to people who were unemployed”.

Funding

The initial allocation from the funding for this year is €15m, which should complete the first phase of the insulation programme announced in June 2013.

It will mean that every local authority house will have at a minimum draught proofing, attic insulation and where appropriate cavity wall insulation, said O’Sullivan.

In 2013 more than 13,000 homes benefitted from this energy efficiency measure.  When I launched the programme with Minister Howlin in June 2013 our initial target for the remainder of the year  was 5,000 homes.  We’ve exceeded that target and in 2014 we want to maintain the momentum behind this beneficial initiative.

Here’s how the money will be allocated:

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The first €15m will be spent on completing the cavity wall, draught-proofing and attic insulation phase. It’s expected that the majority of this work will be complete in most areas by the middle of this year.

When this phase is complete, a further €15m will be allocated for more intensive insulation measures as part of the work.

This will see the external or internal insulation of houses with solid or hollow block construction.

Any single glazed windows or “particularly poor performing windows” and doors can be replaced during this second phase.

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