Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am in my office in the Oireachtas. I thank the witnesses for their presentations. It shows the merit of taking a circular approach as opposed to just looking at the production-based inventory we have in carbon budgeting.

One thing that strikes me is that the representatives are very heavily focused on regulation, with demolition statements, embodied carbon statements, circularity statements and log books. That is necessary and will come, but I also hear from them that the industry does not have the skills to do that. Where is the low-hanging fruit? For example, it was stated that 24% of newly constructed homes here are timber versus 75% in Scotland. Can we achieve a shift there, through the professions and the typical designs that are used? Can we make an early shift? Some 90% of construction demolition waste is not reused. Only 10% has any recovery. Can we make early changes there so we get early wins while these larger regulatory changes are being made?

It would be interesting to hear from our EU colleague about where these regulatory changes are being pushed through. I am sure Ms Lindblom has had to carry out regulatory impact assessments. What is their likely impact on cost? In the long term, it will obviously make it cheaper to run these buildings over their life cycle but we face a housing crisis in the short term. Will we face short-term rises in costs in completion that forces first-time buyers?

Have the representatives spoken to the SEAI, which is about to launch an €8 billion retrofit programme, in order to make sure that some of these principles will be built in at the outset? We will have 20 big aggregators for retrofitting. It seems possible they could embrace some of the suggestions.