Councillor says there is “no Government ambition” to retrofit social housing

Social Democrats Councillor Eóin Ó Broin has said the Government “lacks ambition” in the area of retrofitting social housing. 

Responding to data from South Dublin County Council that the 2023 Government target for retrofitting social housing in the area was 110 properties, Ó Broin said that “it will take decades to renovate the 10,000+ properties at this rate, and decades is what the climate does not have.”

Councillor Ó Broin brought a resolution to South Dublin County Council calling for “an ambitious timeframe for retrofitting South Dublin County Council’s existing housing stock to a level that ensures, the comfort of tenants via efficient heating systems, the health of tenants by the elimination of damp and mould and that climate targets are met via a substantial reduction in the use of fossil fuels for heating and cooking.”

Speaking for the motion Cllr Ó Broin stated “the bourgeois FF-FG-Green government did not want to set an example of low carbon renovation with Social Housing and instead preferred to rely on the market and individual house owners to renovate private homes.

Ó’ Broin noted his disappointment, saying that Ireland had been given the chance to ‘lead by example’ in publicly owned housing as well as reducing levels of fuel poverty and air pollution.

The Social Democrats councillor said, “the SDCC will tender for the renovation of the 110 houses for 2023, rather than using their own well-qualified housing maintenance staff.”

“A problem with this is that the opportunity for in-house ‘learning by doing’ by SDCC will be lost especially given that many of the designs of Social Housing built in the 1970s and 1980s are the same.”

“SDCC have an opportunity to find generic renovation solutions to bringing their Social Housing to BER of B2 through learning by doing – this won’t be achieved by piecemeal tendering of renovation contracts,” he added.