Dr. John Curtis:

The Deputy's first question was about people in fuel poverty. This research was carried out in collaboration with the SEAI. We had access to the administrative data of this scheme at household level but the data were anonymised. Some of the Deputy's questions were about the people in the homes. We knew nothing apart from where they were but we knew a lot about the types of houses and what they had done to them, whether cavity wall insulation or otherwise. Some people went back to apply multiple times and so on. While we do not have a full picture of everything the Deputy asked about, we learned a lot just by interrogating the data that were there. She is right that cavity and attic insulation was by far the most popular. It is also the cheapest to put in and probably, in many instances, the least burdensome for households.

She referred to the abandonment of applications. We said the rate is 15%, which she thought would be higher, but if she thinks about it, these are households that first of all can afford to do this because they are coming up with the 65% not covered by the grant. They are also engaged enough that they know when they need to do something to reduce their energy costs, they turn up and they have made the decision that they will do something. However, some fall away and, in a sense, one has lost them because getting people engaged is really difficult. The SEAI is finding this. The number of applications is going down over time because the people who are positively engaged have all already done it. From analysis of the data, the people who abandoned applications were those who were going for what one might call a deep retrofit. They were going for the walls, the attic, the solar panels. They were also the ones who had the bonus payments in latter years. Our conclusion on this was that when the cold light of day came and they realised they had to get in touch with a plumber and probably a builder and whoever else and take time off work, they just stopped.

Our recommendation to the SEAI on this was that it needs to make it easy for people and create a MABS-type one stop shop for retrofits where people would receive objective advice. It is probably worse than buying a car or a house. As most people are not energy technology oriented, they are buying something they do not fully understand. They need independent advice and they need to be able to buy it as an entire product.

The Deputy made a point on the breakdown. We have a lot of data on the breakdown but I do not have them here. It tails off very quickly after people put in one and two measures, such as cavity wall insulation. Previous research and surveys of occupants done by some of my colleagues with Respond! Housing Association on retrofits in some of its housing stock found that once people make an energy efficiency measure, they wipe their hands and decide they are sorted because they have dealt with the climate bit and they move onto the next issue. To achieve our low-carbon future, even the houses that have a done a retrofit need to reduce their amount of carbon production and the amount of fossil fuels they burn by a huge amount. In a sense, the people who already have done a retrofit feel they have done their bit and it will be very difficult to engage with them.

Another recommendation we made to SEAI based on the research is that at present, the grant scheme is very much input driven. People get grants for installing something and it does not matter whether they need it or whether it works. In a sense, the grant should be for achieving an improvement in the BER rating or some such measure so there is a return on the State's investment in achieving low carbon.

There is an energy supplier obligation to achieve energy savings with which committee members may be familiar. The fossil fuel, electricity and gas companies have an obligation to achieve energy efficiency savings in the housing stock. They may cold call people at night and piggyback on the grant from the SEAI to install energy efficiency measures. We could tell the applicants in the scheme who sent in their own applications and the applicants who came through an energy company. We did not know the particular energy supplier in question because they are coded and anonymous, but we saw a different pattern in what the companies were encouraging people to install in their houses. The companies' target was not energy efficiency or reduced carbon but they were signing up for credits to comply with their own obligation. We had a split incentive. The companies were seeking to meet their obligation target but were not necessarily doing the best thing on behalf of the households in question. If more grant schemes are put in place, and we do need more help for households, instead of being input driven it would be hugely beneficial to achieving low carbon emissions to have them output driven.