Mr. William Walsh:

I thank the committee for the invitation to attend the meeting today to discuss the national retrofit implementation plan. I am joined by my colleagues Ms Margie McCarthy, director of research and policy insights; Dr. Ciaran Byrne, director of national retrofit; and Mr. Brian O'Mahony, head of the community and national retrofit department. To assist this discussion, we separately submitted relevant briefing material on the national retrofit programme to the committee last week. I thank the committee for affording me the opportunity to present my opening statement.

SEAI is at the forefront of Ireland's clean energy transition. We are funded by the Government of Ireland through the Department of the Environment, Climate, and Communications and the Department of Transport. In 2022, our budget allocation is more than €440 million. Of this, €267.2 million is allocated specifically to energy retrofits in homes and communities.

At SEAI, we are acutely aware that the energy transition must be a just transition. This is carefully considered across our delivery programmes, our research and our policy advice. Of the €8 billion allocated in the national development plan to home energy upgrades, half of this figure is ring-fenced for action to support vulnerable and energy-poor households.

SEAI places citizens, communities, suppliers and other stakeholders at the heart of everything we deliver. We are catalysts for action through our grant and incentive programmes and our capacity-building processes with citizens, communities, and the business and public sectors. We have had a major transformative impact on the Irish economy and in the past decade, our actions have underpinned more than €1.2 billion in energy savings.

The Government's climate action plan 2021 sets ambitious residential energy goals for 2030. This includes installing 600,000 heat pumps, 200,000 of which will be in new homes while 400,000 will be retrofitted into existing homes. It also includes achieving 500,000 B2 building energy rating, BER, home upgrades. Both of these key targets support the reduction in carbon emissions from the residential sector from approximately 7 million tonnes in 2018 to between 3.5 and 4 million tonnes in 2030. The quicker we achieve this, the sooner the broad range of benefits will flow to Irish households in the form of cheaper-to-run, warmer and healthier homes; improved air quality; and improved security of energy supply.

In 2021, SEAI was designated as the national retrofit delivery body. SEAI has unique experience in residential energy policy implementation. In the 20 years since our establishment, the warmer homes scheme has helped to improve the warmth, comfort and health of more than 143,000 vulnerable energy-poor homeowners while the house of tomorrow programme demonstrated the feasibility of technological solutions leading to stronger building regulations for energy. Through our implementation of the BER programme, more than 800,000 homes, or almost 50% of the housing stock, have a BER, which puts Ireland to the forefront of this important consumer empowerment instrument. The greener homes scheme supported 33,000 renewable home heating systems building market confidence in, and establishing, robust supply chains for technologies like solar thermal and heat pumps. The better energy homes scheme has provided €292 million to support more than 268,000 homeowners to complete shallow and moderate home upgrades.