Six million pounds of good news for construction workers and tenants - Ritchie

Housing Minister Margaret Ritchie has announced a further £6million for Housing Executive maintenance programmes.

Minister Ritchie said: "Six million pounds will be spent on kitchen replacements and new heating systems in houses which desperately need to be modernised. This means that thousands of people will now have their homes improved.

“Just as importantly, this further £6million will secure jobs for the Housing Executive’s Egan contractors who will have a large body of new work to carry out."

The Minister added: "The extra money for this work has been made possible by sound budgetary management. This is a great outcome for the thousands of construction sector workers who depend on this work for their livelihoods and the tenants who are getting their houses upgraded."

Notes to editors:

1. The Northern Ireland Housing Executive uses the services of a small number of ‘Egan’ contractors to carry out all of its heating and kitchen replacement work and multi-element improvement works. There was growing concern that because of budgetary pressures, this work was drying up and the contractors might have had to make large numbers of redundancies. This has now been averted.
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