Dr. Tricia Keilthy:

The Senator is correct about the challenge in ensuring the private rental sector achieves minimum energy efficiency standards. The split incentive is a huge challenge in that landlords are unlikely to upgrade homes because they do not see an initial benefit, while low income tenants do not have the means to do it themselves. Many of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment's schemes are only available to low income homeowners. There are no schemes available for those who are renting privately. The uptake of the better energy homes scheme by landlords is less than 3%.

There are not enough incentives to encourage landlords to upgrade their properties without it having a negative impact on the supply of rental properties or rents in order that they will not be increased. Landlords who have made this investment may want to increase the rent the charge. While there are challenges, there is a huge opportunity if measures are designed properly. If there are incentives for landlords that are conditional on security of tenure, that is, where a landlord is willing to rent his or her property to a HAP tenant for a long tenancy period of five or ten years, they can access grants to upgrade their properties. That is something we have put forward and it would require a long lead-in time. We have suggested that by 2030 all private rented accommodation have a C building energy rating, BER, or above. It is a long-term ask and would require incremental changes over a number of years to reach it.

The State is the landlord of approximately 140,000 households. It is a very straightforward way of upgrading the stock of housing. Social housing tenants are as much at risk of being in energy inefficient homes as those in the private rented sector. These are two issues that need to be looked at in the climate action plan and considering how we will tackle energy poverty. This is very important, particularly if carbon taxes are to be increased.