Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 26 April 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

New Retrofitting Plan and the Built Environment: Discussion

Photo of Réada CroninRéada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the excellent albeit very worrying presentations. I am struck by Mr. Barry's points that under the current building regulations, there is no requirement for measurement of carbon emissions in construction beyond that associated with operational energy and that the Government's ambitious construction and renovation programme over the next 20 years, which are really critical years, could lead to excessive emissions and waste if embodied carbon is not considered. How have we got ourselves into this position? It seems to be State short-sightedness at its worst.

Mr. Barry spoke about the huge gap with regard to embodied carbon. With the plans for construction and retrofitting, have we actually started running before we can walk? Could this be seen to be that we are running? What we are hearing is certainly food for thought. It seems to expose a kind of silo thinking.

Dr. Kinnane spoke of retrofitting the retrofits. This certainly would send an unwelcome chill down anybody's spine. I am worried that there is a lot of silo thinking here when what we actually need is joined-up thinking, for example, in addressing vacancy and reclaiming property. We all know the old saying, "I would not start from here." Why are we starting here, given that we have all of these gaps and lapses that appear to be known, yet we have commenced retrofitting? Dr. Kinnane is saying we might not be doing it right and we might have to go back and retrofit these retrofits in another ten years. There is a lot of good work going on and there are a lot of data. To follow up on the comments of my colleague, Deputy Darren O'Rourke, who is in charge so that we can use this properly? This seems to be a bit of a horror show, from my reading of the two presentations. I am also interested in the EU perspective from Dr. Lindblom on this.

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