Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am talking about retrofit that is purely residential. There is the shallow one and then there is the deep retrofit. Could I get a breakdown of the figures for shallow retrofit versus deep retrofit? Some colleagues have rightly said that when people hear that it might cost €40,000 or €50,000, they shy away. It is almost like breaking it down into chunks and explaining to people that shallow retrofit is the road to it. Not many people would have the entire amount to do their homes. Given that the most inefficient houses in this State were built before 1979, which was when the idea of energy saving and insulation first came in, I note that 50% of our housing stock is pre-1979. Obviously, theses house are the most expensive ones to retrofit. They involve the deep retrofit about which we are talking. As 72% of homes in rural areas are detached houses, we are talking about large areas. Our homes are larger than the European average. We have more rooms per person. We seem to live in luxury but in the cold. It is a bigger area in its entirety to retrofit, not just by unit but by square acreage - whatever measurement is used - so we have more to retrofit. Given the really prohibitive costs, which most people would say that they cannot afford, the green economy, greening our environment and electric vehicles, those demands are almost coming at us because we are being made to feel guilty about what we are doing. Sometimes that is contraindicated in terms of people taking responsibility and getting something out of it for themselves because there is a feeling of punishment and dipping into our pockets once again. We are only shortly out of a massive recession that did a lot of damage to people in this country. Would it be worthwhile prioritising the interventions, whatever they may be - shallow or deep retrofits - for pre-1979 homes given that they make up 50% of homes in this country? Another issue is doing it chunk by chunk focusing on attic and roof insulation with the draughtproofing. We did it previously in the 1980s. Other issues include low energy lighting, the lagging of water pipes and tanks and the shallow retrofit that is relatively affordable and much more easily grasped by people.

For a while, I have been very curious about the material used for insulation on the exterior - what is known as wrap-around. We saw the horrific fire hazards shown in the Grenfell Tower fire. How combustible is that material? Have we figured that out? It is not just about homes. There was a fire at a hospital in Melbourne last week that involved wrap-around insulation. Parts of some hospitals in Britain have been shut down for a number of months or years to take off all this cladding. This cladding can be very dangerous for householders, hospitals and schools.