Dr. Ciaran Byrne:

That is a very good question. It leans back into the point that Mr. Walsh made earlier about the precursor to this, the report by the national retrofit task force. The task force did significant work, not just consulting domestically with a whole range of sectors but also looking at a whole range of international examples to identify what might or might not work. It is on that basis that we are building targets and measures that we think are achievable. These take account of the capacity of the supply chain, labour market availability, inflation and how it has moved in, as well as the ability to generate demand. That was the basis on which targets were to build up slowly. Experience has shown that where you build them up slowly, even potentially too slowly, but in a way that means they are sustainable and deliverable and give people time to build up, you end up in a much more sustainable market.

The other important issue with retrofit is that we are going into people’s homes. As I mentioned, a retrofit cannot be retrofitted. It is therefore important that we build that quality piece and get the systems and processes right. We really do not want to go gangbusters at this and then find out we have done the wrong thing or are not doing it the right way or we end up with issues. That is why there is some degree of caution in building up and getting it right the first time. We are building the building blocks up to 2030. In reality, we are building the blocks for beyond that. We are really aiming at 2050.