Offaly County Council to survey specific homes as part of energy retrofit project

Measures to improve the energy efficiency of local authority houses in the midlands will kick off in Offaly shortly as part of the Midlands Retrofitting Scheme.

In Budget 2020, € 20 million was committed to deliver a new model to housing upgrades and significantly upgrade the social housing stock in the region in 2020 .

Speaking at the July meeting of Birr Municipal District, John Cunningham, Senior Executive Engineer, outlined how the new measures were “designed to improve the energy efficiency of local authority houses, which would result in warmer homes and lower energy bills”.

Offaly County Council will initially target older people's dwellings and houses with “extremely poor energy ratings”. As part of this work, surveys will be carried out of these homes, which will in turn inform the type of works the local authority will need to undertake.

“The outcome of those surveys will give us information we need to prepare contract documents with a plan towards doing the work in this calendar year. The outcome of that work will be a B2 energy rating, which is a reasonable modern standard of energy efficiency.”

Cllr Eamon Dooly voiced concerns about whether the work would be completed in 2020. “If the surveys aren't completed yet it's unlikely that you are going to have any work done this year,” he remarked, following Mr Cunningham's presentation.

Cllr Peter Ormond asked whether the council had received its allocation of funding from the scheme yet. He then voiced concerns about going into people's homes to do the surveys. “Because there will be a lot of expectation out there. In terms, if you do an energy audit or a survey that the council would then do the house..... There is a lot of work to be done on these houses and I think we have to strategically look at this.”

Cllr John Carroll then asked what the average cost per house was and whether any budget had been allocated yet to undertake the work. Cllr Clare Claffey asked when it was hoped the work would begin under the proposed scheme?

Cllr John Clendennen questioned the council official about whether there would be a cap on the cost of the work to be undertaken to each house before pointing out the disruption the works could cause to the occupants. “Fully fitting, a house out will mean the house may be unlivable for a while. What is going to be the plan in regards to that,” he asked before pointing out that it could “cause concern in itself because of the era we are living in with Covid-19”. “I think we need to establish a bit of clarity around that,” he added.