Mr. Declan Meally:

Obviously, the use of demolition waste, its recovery and the circular economy sits within the remit of the Environmental Protection Agency. It is not within the gift of the SEAI in terms of the energy piece. I would not even attempt to comment on the waste piece.

Obviously we are dealing with the public sector and also commercial sectors with regard to energy retrofits and energy upgrades. Increasingly, the organisations we are dealing with and the investment community on the private side are looking at the investment case in respect of taking into account the embodied energy within a building rather just saying they will knock it and build from scratch because they can get X, Y and Z into it, be it extra floors or whatever.

We had our energy show last week and there was a specific area looking at this in the commercial sector, so it is getting much more focus. We are certainly getting a sense that there are many more cases of looking at retrofitting rather than knocking and building. We look at that across the board with regard to the programmes we have and in terms of encouraging it, to see if there is an easier way to decarbonise the building rather than knock it and build again. It appears that the business case is coming more towards retrofit than knocking it when that is taken into account. Institutional investment funds will take into account whether one is getting rid of embodied carbon and adding to a carbon budget one does not have if one is going to knock it and build it new. It has become very much front and centre in terms of any of the large estate management companies looking at this from an Ireland point of view, and that is becoming an international trend as well.