Dr. Ciaran Byrne:

We also discussed this at a previous committee meeting. The big changes over the better energy homes into individual measures scheme came from 2011. We came to a particular economic time then, especially in the building sector, when there was an effective stop in the building sector. The policy put in a lot of grants and supports for people to undertake retrofit, to get it done and also to engage construction workers who might have been displaced to other parts of the sector. There was also a home renovation incentive, which was an additional tax incentive with a grant put in place. The members have the figures in front of them where they can see the bundle of homes done in that period of time came down a bit but it is coming back up again. We can see that many of the homes, such as the low-hanging fruit and those that were easy to hit, had been done in that period of time.