Mr. Pat Barry:

I thank the committee for the invitation to present at today’s meeting. The Irish Green Building Council was founded by organisations operating in the construction and property sector to accelerate the transition to a sustainable built environment. We advocate and educate, but we also develop tools to facilitate this transition. For example, we have developed the home performance index certification system to improve the environmental quality of new homes and the environmental product declaration, EPD, Ireland programme to provide transparent information on the environmental impact of construction products.

In 2017, we worked in close co-operation with the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment to develop Ireland’s national renovation strategy. We are now working with our members on the implementation of this strategy. This includes working with all the construction institutes to upskill their members for renovation. We are also working on designing a building renovation passport to enable homeowners to plan cost-effective staged renovation over a number of years.

We must get all our homes, both new and existing, to zero carbon by 2050. For existing homes, we need a step change in both the level of activity and the depth of energy efficiency upgrades to transition every home to zero carbon. In the process we can eliminate fuel poverty and improve people’s health and well-being by giving them warm, mould-free homes. This will reduce health expenditure by alleviating illness related to damp and cold.

We can also create sustainable construction jobs for the next 30 years in every village and town across the country. We welcome the recent document from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government entitled "Bringing Back Homes: Manual for the Reuse of Existing Buildings". By focusing on renovating empty homes and accommodation above shops and businesses in the centres of our villages and towns, we can revitalise existing communities while reducing carbon emissions from transport and making best use of the existing stock.

The national planning framework proposes to build 500,000 houses over the next 21 years, adding 25% to the existing stock. This represents a great opportunity to regenerate and densify existing towns and cities. The nearly-zero energy standard comes into force on 1 November this year for new homes through Part L of the building regulations, but we need to go further. We must move to fossil-free energy systems and must consider the wider unregulated carbon impacts of homes such as water usage and the materials used to build them. We must ensure that all new homes are well located with walkable access to amenities and public transport. By moving to energy positive homes, new homes can play a part in decarbonising our electricity.

Our home performance index certification gives developers and local authorities a framework for better built, better quality, healthy homes in connected, ecologically enhanced communities. It is not enough to have energy efficient homes, they must enable low-carbon lifestyles.

We believe that the following actions are needed to ensure all citizens can make low-carbon choices and live in truly sustainable homes and neighbourhoods. Government must provide long-term certainty that deep energy renovation is and will remain a top priority. This will allow everyone in the industry to invest with confidence in the skills and innovation needed. Government needs to support the rapid upskilling of the industry in order that homeowners can identify which building professionals and tradesmen have the expertise to do quality renovation. We must ramp up funding for local authorities to renovate all their housing stock.

We need to make finance available to everyone to renovate their homes, whether though low-interest loans or green mortgages. The Irish Green Building Council has just been provided funding by the European Commission to work on establishing a green mortgage programme in Ireland over the next two years. This will enable homeowners to access cheaper finance for renovation and allow home buyers to benefit from reduced interest rates if they buy the greenest new homes on the market. We already have commitments from home builders to provide greener new homes if the banks support them with such a programme. All banks, credit unions and other financial institutions should now be required to play their part and participate in financing the energy transition.

We thank the committee once again for the invitation to speak today.