The benefits of low-energy consumption in housing are well known. In light of ever increasing fuel costs and the spectre of carbon taxation, more and more householders are looking at home heating and other energy requirements that can be met by using a combination of energy conservation, along with renewable, low cost and even free energy sources.
In simple economic terms what is important in the private sector is doubly important for public housing schemes which, as a rule, exist to serve lower income families and individuals. From this perspective, the environmental argument for better building needn't even come into it: clearly, rising fuel costs are most significant for those with the lowest household incomes. As social housing is set aside to meet social and economic need, it is therefore only sensible that social housing should have low energy use requirements.
This seems to be the view of Ireland’s closest neighbours, the UK—which is certainly not renowned for being proactive in sustainable building. EcoHomes is an environmental rating tool developed by the Building Research Establishment, which rates homes base on an aggregate of 27 parameters including proximity to public transport, thermal performance, environmental impact of materials, use of renewables, CO2 emissions to name but a few. All social housing built through the Housing Corporation or the English Partnership in Britain, and the Department for Social Development in Northern Ireland, must achieve a “Very Good” EcoHomes rating to qualify for funding, while social housing that achieves an “Excellent” EcoHomes rating gets additional funding. The scale of this is impressive; the Housing Corporation, for instance, funds the construction of roughly 35,000 homes per annum in England alone.
But it doesn’t end there, as Andrew Eagles, Sustainability Manager with the Housing Corporation explains:
“[Housing] associations are eligible to receive grants of up to £50,000 for renewable energy installations, including solar thermal and wind turbines. Furthermore, as we have classed this funding as ‘other public subsidy’, it is available in addition to our own grant funding, as opposed to being deducted from it."
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It is disappointing, therefore, that our Department of the Environment has decided that grant aid delivered by Sustainable Energy Ireland should be deducted from the funding allocated by the department to local authorities and housing associations developing social housing.
Social housing need in Ireland is great and most commentators agree that not enough is being built. Whatever the case, 2005 saw 6,000 residences built in the sector, including 1,300 by voluntary housing associations. Had every one of these been designed to meet sustainable standards, not only would there be major benefit to the residents, but it would also surely have been a serious step toward renewing Ireland's housing stock with modern, future-proofed dwellings.
In order for that to be achieved, a level playing field is called for. However, at present this is far from the case.
On May 5, 2006 Green party TD Ciarán Cuffe submitted a question in the Dåil: "To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government if housing construction schemes which received funding from his Department but also qualified for funding for energy efficiency from Sustainable Energy Ireland have had money deducted from their initial Department funding."
Noel Ahern, Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government responded: "The setting of budget costs by my Department for the construction of social housing schemes involve adjustments of funding levels to eliminate duplication of funding sources should there be cases where funding is provided by Sustainable Energy Ireland."
In plain English, Ahern is saying that the Department of the Environment is already funding the building of social housing and that, therefore, use of further government money to meet the shortfall is unacceptable.
In Ireland today, voluntary and local authority housing is 95 per cent funded by central government. That is to say, 95 per cent of the cost of a housing development is met by the Department of the Environment. The local authority or voluntary housing association must therefore make up the remaining five per cent by other means. Department of the Environment policy forbids duplication of public funding.
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