To ask the Minister for Social Development how his Department reaches homes that are experiencing fuel poverty but lie outside the main fuel poverty concentrations in local council areas.

My Department has a range of schemes and programmes which improve the energy efficiency of low income households in Northern Ireland. The Housing Executive delivers a programme of heating and insulation improvement for its housing stock. Housing Associations also deliver energy efficiency improvements to their stock. The Boiler Replacement Scheme offers grants to privately owned households to replace old and inefficient boilers.

The Affordable Warmth Scheme finds privately owned and privately rented households most at risk of fuel poverty and provides them with a range of energy efficiency improvement measures. While the Affordable Warmth Scheme is primarily a targeted scheme, households not in the targeted areas who believe they meet the qualification criteria can contact their local council to determine if they can get assistance from the scheme.

The Northern Ireland Sustainable Energy Programme (NISEP) also provides grants for energy efficiency improvement to households that do not meet the qualification criteria for other Government schemes.