Mr. Brian O'Mahony:

On the supply chain side, the SEAI has been building to this point for more than ten years and has done many shallow retrofits. In the past two years, our programmes have pivoted towards deeper interventions resulting in ratings of B2 and beyond, up to even A1. During Covid we have seen many of the supply chains cease to operate globally. They have had to be refilled in the past 12 months. We have seen that that has started to unwind from product and material availability. There has been a knock-on impact on costs. Last year, right after the lockdown in Ireland was lifted, we looked in detail at the cost side to see what the costs were in the marketplace, both in our schemes and externally. Then we noticed during the summer that we were getting reports that costs had increased even last year, so we went back out again in the autumn, and we plan to go out again this year. We are preparing to go out and to see what is happening with the costs because of recent inflation as a result of a number of geopolitical factors. That is looking just at the cost.

As for the supply side in Ireland, as Dr. Byrne said, there are 19 applications for registration as a one-stop shop. We aim by the end of 2022 to have 20 one-stop shops registered. Some of them will be companies that do national coverage and some may be focused more regionally or on particular types of building stock for homes. That is how we foresee this will go. The market will not be a homogenous one-size-fits-all one for everybody in Ireland, with many companies having the exact same business model and approach across the country. That is what we see coming through from our experience in the past two years on the development call. We will have to see how we move through the coming years, but if we had 20 one-stop shops operating by the end of the year, and the applications we have received to date give us comfort that we will achieve that easily, I think we would be able to meet the demand that we see at present and that we have seen grow in the past quarter. In 2021, some of our one-stop shops did more than 500 deeper renovations, resulting in ratings of B2 and beyond, so the one-stop shops have that capacity and we are confident about that and about the supply side.