Delay in funding for council housing adaptation scheme

APPROXIMATELY €80 million in funding for a housing adaptation grant scheme, normally allocated in the first quarter of the year, has not yet been paid to local authorities by the Department of the Environment.

The knock-on effect of the delay means local authorities are not in a position to approve grants for vital adaptation work in the homes of older people and people with disabilities.

And some small contractors who have already carried out adaptations, such as widening doors to fit wheelchairs or building downstairs bathrooms, have not yet been paid.

The Housing Adaptation Grant Scheme for Older People and People with a Disability was introduced as part of a reorganisation of grants to assist people with disabilities and older people to stay in their own homes.

In 2008, €71.4 million was paid to local authorities for the scheme and a further €13 million was paid for the Special Housing Aid for the Elderly Scheme, before the latter scheme was subsumed into the former.

Funding had been channelled through the Health Service Executive and through local authorities, but is now paid only through local authorities, who must match 80 per cent from the Department of the Environment with 20 per cent of their own funding.

Cork Labour Party TD Ciarán Lynch said he understood local authorities across the country had run out of cash to operate the scheme.

Contractors could not proceed with work or had not been paid for work already done, he said.

“These builders are primarily small operations and simply cannot afford to be left out of pocket for such a protracted period of time,” he said.

“I am informed that the very survival of some of these small contracting firms is now in question, thanks to the failure of councils to pay their bills, due to what is now a five-month delay by Minister Gormley’s department in issuing the 2009 Housing Adaptation Grant funds to local authorities.”

He said small businesses could not cope with the cash-flow problems and the Department of the Environment was putting people on the dole.

A spokesman for the Department of the Environment said the funds were not allocated to the scheme because the department had been waiting for the results of the Budget.

He said the department intended to make the allocations to local authorities on Wednesday of this week.

The funds would be slightly increased on last year, he said, though he could not say whether that would be an increase on the combined totals of the housing adaptation grant and the housing aid for the elderly scheme, or simply an increase on the adaptation grant.