Dr. Ciaran Byrne:

There are two parts to it. With regard to the BER, which relates to the energy performance of the home, we have the biggest database in the country. Therefore, we know about the home. The issue is that it is difficult to get full listings of those in income poverty from the Department of Social Protection, for various reasons. To get the full picture, it would ideally be a matter of matching the income poverty listing with the listing on homes to get the full picture. You can work by proxy to a degree and examine cohorts and BER data, based on the view that if you stratify by region, area and cohort, you might get close. I understand the Department of Social Protection would have quite significant listings of the people on the various types of allowances, but this is not information that can be shared adequately.

On the other point, the BER database exists. Several companies are working to utilise it. Companies such as Codema and BERWOW are building packages to get more intelligence from the database to feed back into the market to help with targeting.