Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will have to go on memory and I am very much rounding the figures. However, as the Deputy said, there are 2 million houses and my understanding is that about 1.5 million are at a B or lower rating. Any new apartments or houses built from the 2008-09 period onwards, when building regulations improved, should not need to be retrofitted and should have a sufficiently high rating. Of those, and I am going on my memory of the housing stock, I think roughly 250,000 are social houses and, while some may have a very high rating, most of them are slightly older and they will have to be done. The warmer homes scheme is deliberately targeted at that, as I said. We will also have a major issue with public buildings, for example, schools, hospitals, Garda stations and every Department building. We have just completed an audit with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform which shows the scale of the work that has to be done. It is equally important for decarbonisation but we also do not want our children in cold, poorly-built schools or our patients in draughty hospital wards. There is also the commercial building stock, which again is probably similar in scale, if not bigger, than the public buildings stock. Therefore, we have three major projects.

I would expect that, of the 1.5 million, 1 million will be done by private householders. There will continue to be grant support but that cannot be the main vehicle for getting it done, as we would not have sufficient grant capability and, at the same time, we would also need money for public buildings and social housing stock. We will increasingly rely on things like new low-cost lending schemes, similar to the sort of loans that have been introduced in the Brexit period for small businesses, where there are credit guarantees on the first section of the loan and the Government effectively secures the first tranche against default possibilities. That lowers the risk in the overall loan and it allows other lenders in. We see An Post is currently advertising everywhere for retrofit lending. It allows it to feed in with its lending and its expertise, and it is working with SSE Airtricity. That is one example. It is a combination whereby State-backed loans, private lending and engineering expertise come together to give the householder a high quality, low complexity loan.

This is always the difficulty. We need energy experts to come in to help householders and, critically, low cost finance, which will start to make it viable. That will be key to developing the private housing stock. The key benefits in my mind, are not only the huge health benefits in daily life when living in the building.

Critically, it increases the value of a property. Buildings with a high energy ratings are attracting higher prices because people are starting to realise the comfort benefits and the long-term value benefits. Houses with low energy ratings will lose their capital value. That, combined with the low-cost loan, some sort of grant support and the pooling of expertise is how we will develop the housing stock.

On the expertise within the Department, it only engages consultants in the following circumstances: where they have specialised knowledge or expertise not available in the Department; where need for objectivity or independence is essential; where consultancy studies are required by an external body - there could be an EU or other body which look for it; where a specialised project must be completed within a very short time scale; and where the task could be done in-house but would involve a prohibitive cost and is cheaper to do elsewhere.

Earlier, I mentioned the significant increase in the SEAI staffing complement. The other big development in the budget last year is the increase of the staffing complement in the Department with a further 50 full-time positions approved by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Approximately ten of the assistant principals are due to come into place next month and 31 of the 50 are due to be in place by the end of May. Many of those will be going into the energy-climate area where the scale of work is increasing all the time and in respect of which the need for additional resources is clear. I was in this Department before. Maybe I am biased but, not that there was anything wrong with it previously, I can see that it is a scaled up, well resourced and highly capable Department. It has a lot of good internal expertise, I do not have any problem with bringing in outside expertise - that is something I think is needed in a Department so there is not only internal thinking. There are also good relationships, including when people from agencies such as EirGrid come in and work with the Department and they bring their expertise. I think it is in good shape to deliver the huge task ahead of it. I am biased but I would say that.