Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I assure them that just because there are fewer of us does not mean we will not give them a hard time or take up as much of their time as we did with the previous witnesses. As I have many questions, I will put some in a first round and come back to some of the others later. I will start with the near zero energy building standard. One of the points I am not clear on relates to the 2018 obligations for all new public buildings. The presentation indicates that 97% of dwellings built in 2015 achieved an A rating. I have asked a couple of parliamentary questions on where we are moving in terms of the A2 rating and the responses indicated that 98% of all new dwellings are built to an A3 rated BER. However, A2 is the standard. Rather than asking more parliamentary questions and upsetting everyone, what is the position in respect of the 2018 A2 rating requirements? What is not clear in the responses I have received from both Departments is who is monitoring that. I know it is the responsibility of the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government to provide the planning and technical guidance documents and it is the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment that decides on policy but who is checking to make sure this happens? As we approach 2020, this will become increasingly important. Any information on the position as regards the A2 rating and the 2018 obligations and monitoring would be valuable.

I am looking at an SEAI slide and I have been trying to get my head around the CSO data. Is it the case that only 1.25% of residential stock is rated A2 or A1? For those of us who do not work in this area, it would be valuable to find out what volume of the residential stock needs to be moved in that direction by the 2030 deadline. That would give us a sense of the scale of the undertaking.

This committee has not been involved in the process of developing the NZEB requirements that are about to published. Taking on board what was said in the earlier session on gas boilers, was consideration given to including phase-out dates in those regulations? If the argument is that we do not have the skills, expertise or industry capacity to simply prevent gas boilers from being phased out now, was consideration given to incentivise the industry and the Government to increase capacity by having phase-out dates? Is that still being considered? If we were to take the advice earlier and have a series of phase-out dates for oil and gas boilers, what would be possible or credible given the costs involved, the skill set available and current capacity of industry?

A wonderful line was used in the presentation of the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government in connection with the Minister signing the European Union regulations and the targets "subject to the necessary transitional arrangements". I ask for more information on those targets.

The committee has spent considerable time looking at sources of finance for approved housing bodies, small and medium size builders and the private sector to build housing. The challenges in that area are similar to those cited in this discussion. Are all the current discussions focused on ways to de-risk and reduce the cost of private finance or is consideration being given to taking a Housing Finance Agency-type approach to funding loan finance? That would provide much more attractive options in terms of the cost of the finance to the borrower, albeit with the borrowing being on the State's balance sheet, even if it is sourced from the European Investment Bank because it is guaranteed by the State. The position is likewise in terms of credit union finance, where all sorts of issues also arise. The committee has discussed at great length when the credit union sector will be ready to have a special purpose vehicle to lend into the approved housing body sector. Are the witnesses involved in a similar conversation? The credit unions seem to me to be another eminently sensible source of finance. Home Building Finance Ireland, HBFI, is a fund with €750 million of taxpayers' money and it will leverage a similar amount from the private sector to lend to small and medium sized builders. At any stage, were either of the Departments involved in discussions to see if we could maximise the benefit of that lending to small and medium sized builders to ensure that those buildings have the highest possible energy efficiency levels? If not, would it be worthwhile to do so?

Training is primarily the responsibility of another Department. It is probably remiss of us not to invite departmental officials to this meeting but we may do so at another stage. Are discussions taking place with the Department? Is the Department part of the conversation in terms of interdepartmental engagement to try to fill the skills and capacity gaps?

A total spend of €128 million on social housing between 2013 and 2018 amounts to only €21 million per annum. It is a small amount of money in the context of the overall capital budget available to the Department. Are discussions taking place on increasing the annual spending on social housing? None of the information I have received today or from the CSO shows the BER rating of social housing stock. Is that information available? Can the witnesses tell us how many units are rated A, B, C, D and so on?

One of the figures suggested many of the retrofits are about bringing them up to a B rating. Do we know how many units of the social housing stock owned by local authorities or approved housing bodies have an A rating or is that information available? I will come back to some other questions in the second round.