Mr. Jim Gannon:

Our insight into the market is based on upgrading approximately 400,000 homes over more than 15 years. This is of a total stock of 2 million so it is a significant proportion. This has been at a range of levels, predominantly shallow retrofit. It is important that we begin to understand these distinctions.

In terms of the challenge to 2030, whereby we speak about 500,000 homes, right now through our programmes and the obligated parties, which are the energy supply companies, we can track upgrades and approximately 50,000 people per annum complete energy upgrades to their homes. This does not include others who do not approach the grant programmes or the obligated parties and those who perform home improvements but do not seek a grant. In terms of the scale of activity, we need to bring these people to deeper interventions and facilitate them.

We need to understand what we have in the building stock. There are approximately 2 million homes in Ireland, with approximately 1.7 million of them occupied according to the most recent census. Slightly less than 10% of these are in public ownership or funded by the public purse through approved housing bodies. This becomes very important because if we understand the status of these homes and have a long-term plan for retrofit, we can create an aggregated portfolio that could be easier to finance. Looking at this portfolio can allow us to think about it as a battery we can access in an economic downturn, retaining skills and jobs distributed throughout the country and taking advantage of lower cost construction during lean years. Part of the plan should be looking at the opportunity of addressing a downturn.

More than 800,000 homes have building energy ratings, BER. The key point is to look at where the general spike in ratings is. Most homes are rated at the lower end of C and the upper end of D. When we talk about a B2 level of ambition we need to understand where we are coming from and going to. Interestingly, a spike is developing in A2 and A3 ratings as a result of our highly advanced building regulations. That spike will continue to grow as we deliver newer houses. The decline in the number of D and E ratings, which are yellow and orange in the graph, is largely because of the retrofit we have achieved. Retrofit generally attacks this basket and we can already see the impact of the measures we are taking.

In terms of the performance to 2030, our deep retrofit programme seeks to examine the technical, financial and supply chain challenges to getting our housing stock to where it needs to be by 2050. It also looks at houses that are poorly performing. We are looking at a change from an F rating up to an A rating. If we consider where the housing stock in Ireland is on average, which is somewhere between the ratings of C and D, and we know the ambition in the climate action plan is to reach a B2 rating, it is a different size of step we are talking about. It has different technical and financial asks. This is something that is very important for all of us in the climate space to understand and communicate consistently to people. We are not always asking people to put €50,000 or €70,000 into their home. We are asking something different. We need to be clear about this and rational in our economic planning for it. Interestingly, we have upgraded a home to deep retrofit for €20,000. We have also upgraded a home for €125,000 because there is no typical Irish home or typical performance. The average is slightly lower than €50,000, just to give a perspective.

In terms of aggregation and finance models, a one-stop shop is the Holy Grail. What is absolutely factually correct is that there is a range of one-stop shop models, with various funding methods, financing propositions for the consumer, back end funding, whether a national bank or the European Investment Bank with alternative investment funds, and various people who catalyse this activity. In certain countries, it is a combination of Danfoss and VELUX - purely private sector entities - bringing something to the market. In other countries, such as Ireland, there is a mixture of private sector and not-for-profit organisations bringing something to the market. In other countries again, it is purely delivered by a national or regional local authority as we traditionally understand them. What is important here is that there is no silver bullet that we can pluck off the shelf and say that is what we need to do. We need to think carefully about the risks involved, how we communicate to people in such a way that they want to do it and how we create the supply chain and the financial ease with which it can be executed.

I do not want to underplay the role of skills in the supply chain. Tipperary Energy Agency has already said the skills shortage is a key element that is stifling the delivery of homes in the marketplace. Separately, it is driving up costs. We need volume to drive down costs. We also need more skills in the market to ease delivery and get more volume through the pipeline. We have been working with the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, the National Standards Authority of Ireland and Wexford and Waterford Education and Training Board, and supporting others indirectly, to make sure those skills are provided but it is a challenge for us. If we experience an economic downturn, what will be needed to come through it is the skill set and volume I mentioned.