Mr. Robert Deegan:

I can take that and Dr. Byrne might come in afterwards. Part of what we are doing with the retrofit plan is stimulating innovation. Schemes such as the community energy grant scheme have innovation as their objective. That scheme and the national home energy upgrade scheme facilitate aggregation and bringing projects together. Whole-street and whole-area retrofits were alluded to earlier, of which we would like to see and encourage much more.

There is also is the opportunity for off-site manufacture in the area of retrofit as well as in new build. This is used in other countries and we would like to see it here. We would really like to see the level of certainty and ambition that the Government has now given stimulating home-grown industries to create more jobs, not just in the delivery of house-to-house retrofits but also in the technology. We are seeing that with some of the heating technology manufacturers. They have seen the signals that have been given and are switching from fossil fuel-based technology heating systems to renewable ones.

As scale builds up, that will also help with cost. It is likely that it will just counteract the extreme inflation we are seeing in the market that is in many ways driven by external rather than internal factors. As more people become qualified and expertise increases, specialisation begins. There was a discussion earlier about the expert group on future skills needs for the new-build sector. That touched on the retrofit sector but another full report was done on retrofit. Skills for Zero Carbon, as the report is titled, provided a skill set-by-skill set consideration for each type of person and quantified these. The report has gone to SOLAS and the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. They are now working to ensure that, as we increase the ramp rates in activity, there is a match between the skills requirements and the people who can actually deliver that activity.

While there is a great deal of focus on apprenticeships, including new ones, which will be absolutely crucial, we cannot rely on these alone because it will take four years for those going into apprenticeships now to become fully qualified. It is about reskilling existing plumbers to enable them to convert to installing heat pumps. We need reskilling and retraining of people in that area. Much like for the new construction sector, it is across the board for the apprenticeship and skills types. The Skills for Zero Carbon report published in November of last year goes into considerable on this. That is a crucial first point.

With regard to the retrofit plan, the four pillars are financing and funding, skills, driving demand and, to a lesser extent, governance. These pillars must go in parallel because we pouring lots of money into a broken system that does not have enough people to deliver it will simply increase the price. If there is not enough demand, we will be training up a large number of people who will end up just sitting there. Demand, supply and finance must all run in parallel.

We also need to do this very urgently because our targets for 2030 and beyond are so ambitious. That is why the comprehensive and coherent approach we are taking with the retrofit plan takes those issues in hand and systematically addresses of them, one by one. That is for this year and it is not the answer to all of the questions, as we would be the first to say. No other country in the world, that we have found at any rate, has the same level of ambition. Others will probably follow us but retrofitting 30% of the housing stock to the level we are talking about is certainly among the most ambitious target of any country in the world.

We will need to continue to evaluate our approach, measure performance, adapt and see what the new barriers are. As we address the previous barriers, we will address the new ones as we identify them, in consultation with stakeholders and the sector.