Mr. Pat Barry:

We do need to move towards a culture, particularly in renovation, where there is more oversight. Putting it all back to the SEAI would be quite an ask. It is probably something that needs to be dealt with in the context of building control rather than the SEAI. Because we will be doing so much more renovation, we need to develop more of a culture of supervision of that renovation among the professionals and within building control. On the question around self-regulation, we need to strengthen building control. I do not think they have sufficient resources yet. We need to strengthen building control in order that they can carry out more inspections.

On the capacity of the timber sector, there is great capacity because the private forests planted in the 1980s and 1990s are all now coming to maturity. Most of that timber is being exported and used in the UK. In terms of the actual timber, while we have the capacity now, for the next 20 or 30 years, there is an issue with replanting in order to continue its sustainability into the future. We definitely have the timber. We have a lot of timber frame companies that can deliver. Many of them are exporting as well. There are some very good companies. We definitely have the capacity there. We can build more capacity if we can increase the demand in Ireland. The first step is to get more timber used in low-rise development and then we need to move towards engineered timbers and cross-laminated timber. We have the capacity to produce that not only for Ireland but also for export across Europe.

In terms of hemp, this is another opportunity. Hemp is rapidly renewable. We are having difficulties in getting farmers to plant timber because the land is taken up for 30 years. It may be easier to persuade them and they are interested in planting hemp. That is something that we could potentially do more quickly by setting up production facilities.