Dr. John Lawlor:

The first thing that strikes me when talking about retrofits, as we heard from Mr. Halpin of SEAI, is how big a task it is to deliver deep retrofits of scale. When Ms Marie Donnelly was before the committee last week, she talked about dealing with the problem of new houses and said we must "stop the leak". I would like to reiterate that point. We are putting carbon into new houses at a time when we do not need to because the energy efficiency of those new houses is so good that they definitely do not need anything other than a heat pump to heat them.

In respect of being able to have houses that can export excess generation onto the grid, commercially, ESB is the only supplier we know of that provides any sort of scheme that does that, although it is currently closed. I would like to make clear, however, that ESB receives no money for the generation that it pays people to provide it. It is a service we provide. We pay people but we get no money back. The systems in place are not in place for us to get paid for that electricity. Under the renewable electricity directive, there is an obligation that we all must end up putting in place systems that will allow parties who export their excess electricity onto the grid to be paid a reasonable rate. That puts a timeline on a solution to this problem being found, which I believe is by the end of 2020, when the directive comes into force and into national legislation. That will effectively put a timeline on resolution of this problem because we will have to have our systems in place to facilitate that. It is clear that smart meters will be a key element in the delivery and in terms of paying people appropriately for their excess generation.