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

I thank the Minister for the answers. I want to come back in with three questions and will respond to some of the initial points. On inspections, will all emergency accommodation be inspected or is it still just the voluntary sector accommodation to be inspected? When I refer to "all" I mean the voluntary sector, the family hubs and the private sector accommodation.

With regard to the issue of gas boilers, I urge the Minister to go back over the transcript of a recent committee meeting here on the subject. The percentage of the total number of boilers going into new builds may be declining, but because far more properties are being built, the number of new gas boilers coming into the system is substantially greater. We are being told by industry that perhaps as many as 60% of new builds have gas boilers. The problem is that while it is not possible to phase out gas boilers today due to constraints around expertise in the industry, unless there is a phased target date by which gas boilers will no longer be used in new builds, they will be used for much longer than is necessary. We will be here in 15 years having a conversation about where to get the money to cover the costs of retrofitting those boilers. I urge the Minister to go back to look again at the nearly zero energy building guidelines and regulations before he publishes them to see if it is possible to consider a target date for the ending of the installation of gas boilers in new builds. My preference would be for 2021.