Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 20 March 2013
363. Deputy Tom Fleming asked the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government if he will meet with the Kerry Oireachtas Members and a delegation from Kerry County Council as a matter of urgency to discuss the 2013 housing grants allocation that has been reduced by 56% on the 2012 allocation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13718/13]
View answerOn 22 February 2013 I announced capital allocations to local authorities under the suite of Grants for Older People and People with a Disability amounting to €42.750 million. In allocating the available funding across all 34 city and county councils I did so in as transparent and as fair a way as possible. In framing the 2013 allocations, my Department wrote to each local authority requesting details of the numbers and value of grant s where work had been approved to commence. Between them, local authorities reported contractual commitments in respect of approved grants totally €18 million. This year I allocated local authorities the full amount of their contractual commitments which, in the case of Kerry County Council, amounted to €838,493. The balance of the available funding was allocated on the basis of each authority’s share of the new applications on hand in January 2013. This brought Kerry County Council’s overall allocation to €1,445,971.
In order to deal with any acute or particular difficulty which might arise in the operation of the schemes over the course of the year I have set aside a small capital reserve . My Department will consider applications from local authorities for a supplementary allocation in such cases . A submission in this regard was received from Kerry County Council on 15 March, and it will need to be examined in the context of the available funding and the requests already received from other authorities; I do not propose , therefore, to make any decisions in relation to supplementary allocations at this time. In the circumstances, meetings with public representatives would not therefore for the present serve any useful purpose.
