Mr. Brian O'Mahony:

The Deputy is correct that the rental sector is a difficult sector to address. Everybody talks about the split incentive, whereby the landlord owns the property and gets the benefit of the capital improvement, but the tenant bears the operational cost.

On the issue of decanting, we typically have not seen that happening at large volume in our schemes to date. I recognise that we want to scale the numbers through this decade. That is because we need to build the supply chain with us, as my colleague just mentioned. The State is looking at minimum energy performance requirements for rental properties, as well as for all properties. This is a proposal contained within the Fit for 55 package that is being reviewed at the moment. That direction of travel is already being discussed at policy level, both nationally and within Europe.

I will revert to one issue, which would apply to all homeowners or people. We are trying to support the retrofit of homes, but every one of these homes has a person in it, where that person owns the property or rents it. We are very much aware of that. Over the last decade, we have acquired considerable experience. In the schemes we are deploying in 2022 and going forward, we spent a lot of work doing voice of the customer, VoC, surveys. We asked people beforehand what they understood about SEAI and then asked what their experience was going through the process with SEAI. We tried to profile the type of people who do upgrades. Traditionally, people would have said that solar PV would be younger people who are possibly in newer homes. What we found, however, was that older people concerned about their energy bills have been installing solar PV. People are also using it in homes that are already improved and have come through one of our schemes. We learned a lot like that.

Last year, we carried out a number of focus groups and surveys and visited individual houses when retrofit works were taking place. Homeowners agree that they need to do something but they believe Government needs to help. When we were developing the new schemes - the better energy homes scheme, shallower measures, the one-stop shops and the warmer homes scheme - homeowners told us that retrofitting was too expensive and they needed more supports.

That is why we came up with the recommended supports that are now in place. A deep retrofit will be about half the cost and it will cost 80% less for shallower measures. These are targeted correctly. We are trying to address the upfront costs through the grants. Homeowners also said that if there was a low-cost financing package available, they would consider taking action now. We all know these things but homeowners are coming back and telling us this.

Last year, the heat pump grant was €3,500. We have nearly doubled it to €6,500. Homeowners have said that they would be interested in a heat pump but it is too expensive and they would be interested in a heat pump if the costs was equivalent to the cost of an oil or gas boiler. That is what we did this year. We rearranged how the grant offering is presented. If homeowners upgrade their house and insulate it, they are left with the decision on whether to leave the heat pump behind, which they do not want to do because the cost is the same as installing a replacement oil or gas boiler. We are trying to drive people in this direction and support them. They are coming back saying this to us.

Homeowners have also said they like how the one-stop shop brings them from start to finish. They like that approach where the measures are taken using a stepped approach rather than all in one go. They may need to do their walls this year and their heating system next year. They see the benefit of the one-stop shop. We have listened to what people are saying both in and outside our schemes. We have also tried to structure the schemes to build for the future.

I refer to a point mentioned by my colleague, Ms McCarthy. The heat study is another piece of work that was carried out. It tells us that there are other ways in which we can help people reduce the carbon footprint of their home and help the State as well. We do not foresee that the supports we offer today will be fixed for the next decade. We foresee that we will be introducing new technologies, ramping down other technologies and finding solutions that meet homeowners' needs. We will be reacting to what the homeowner wants. That is why the heat study is really important because it raises these questions that challenge certain assumptions about heat pumps, solar PV panels or energy efficiency. In the next year or so, we will focus on, test and try to learn about some of those measures, such as the heat loss indicator.