Mr. Sean Giffney:

I will revert to the figures. I would hate it if any committee member believed we had distorted the figure of 100,000 illegal boilers. According to the 2014 figures we have obtained, 34,100 gas boilers were sold. Last year we exceeded the figure of 20,000 illegal gas boilers being installed. One does not need to be Sherlock Holmes to discover how many gas boilers are sold. One only needs to contact the appropriate merchants selling them. We have a great relationship with them. We have tried unsuccessfully to educate the Commission for Energy Regulation, CER, on how to obtain this information. It has been trying to obtain accurate figures for the past three years, but it has failed to do so. We have also asked it about getting the merchants that are selling products to the illegal operators on a daily basis to put up signs pointing out that it is illegal to install gas equipment unless one is a registered gas installer. Our request has been refused. The CER has failed to accept any proposal we have put to it to date. For example, it has refused to contact the Irish Insurance Federation, IIF, to require insurance companies to request declarations of conformance for gas works. It has failed to take action, allowing registered gas installers to work after a ten-day training course. Registered Gas Installers Ireland has 2,700 members. We asked how many of these had entered our organisation as registered gas installers having only completed a ten-day training course. Our evidence suggests carpenters, machinists, labourers, JCB drivers, taxi drivers and so on have entered the registered gas installer scheme. I have evidence that a man from a foreign country approached me approximately three months ago with GI1 and GI2 pass certificates stating he was a qualified gas engineer, yet he did not have a clue what a gas boiler even looked like. He wanted to know whether I would take him on for a six-month trial period and let him work with my installers in order that he could learn to service gas boilers because he had been told that there was a good income to be earned from it and that there was very little work involved. That is what we are up against.