AN allocation of €1.9million has been made available to Limerick City Council to fund three housing projects for older people.
Cllr Pat Kennedy said he had urged the council to write to the Minister for the Environment, acknowledging the allocation they had received to support the grant schemes, specifically aimed at housing for older people, including housing adaptation grants, mobility aid grants and housing aid for senior citizens.
“This grant aid assists in lowering the cost of long term nursing care by the State and helps to increase higher standards in the provision of accommodation for the most vulnerable, and in my proposal to the council, I recommended that we request that the Department would consider supplementing the existing level of funding with a further allocation”.
The outcome, which was welcomed by all of the councillors, was that the allocation for these schemes more than doubled in the space of four years – from 2007 to 2010 – from €0.9million to €1.1million in 2008, to €1.4milion in 2009 and to €1.9million this year.
The increased grants were welcomed by members of the council’s Housing and Social Policy Strategic Policy Committee for “facilitating many of Limerick’s elderly and disabled people to continue to live in their own homes.”
Commenting to the Limerick Post, Cllr Kennedy said he will continue his efforts to secure increased funding for schemes for the elderly and disabled and to “propose the necessary resolution each year to secure increased allocations.
