Mr. Robert Deegan:

The national building renovation plan will be, effectively, the new name for the long-term renovation strategy. The existing directive has a requirement for the long-term renovation strategy which includes an overview of the national building stock, policies and actions to stimulate cost-effective deep renovation and a range of other areas. It is very prescriptive in terms of what must be included. That sets a very high level for non-residential and residential buildings and how we are going to achieve our targets for 2030, 2040 and 2050. The proposal in the new directive is that the first plan would be submitted by the middle of 2024.

Our last long-term renovation strategy was published in September 2020. As I said, that was a high-level document. The national retrofit plan makes that far more granular and translates it into time-bound action steps we need to take to meet the targets set out in the long-term renovation strategy. The national retrofit plan is therefore a slightly more operational version of the long-term renovation strategy. In principle, we see no difficulties with the new proposals in that regard.