Dr. Ciaran Byrne:

My colleague gave a pretty good answer to that question. I will make a couple points, some of which the Chairman touched on. We are talking about retrofit but in any market that one plays in, once the sector sees that there is a market that is stable and growing, people tend to participate in it.

On the retrofit side, we have given clear market signals right out to 2030 - we have really signalled, to a large extent, right out to 2050 - in respect of what we are going to do. When we hit the target in 2030 we will not stop because we will have the other two thirds to complete by 2050. As such, we will be at this for some time. As well as giving market signals, there are also the budgets that have been allocated towards this programme. We are, therefore, giving two very strong signals to the market for people to get involved.

We are seeing that in the one-stop office shop registration where we have the obvious candidates which have been involved in the sector but we have also seen quite a few companies leaning into this and saying they see something here. Some very big companies are looking into this because they are seeing retrofit as a long-term, more stable proposition - I would not use the term "slow burner" - than some of the more cyclical parts of the housing sector.

The other point, which I believe the Chairman touched upon - Deputy O’Donoghue certainly did - is that wherever there are homes, there are homes to be retrofitted. There is a great positive there for regional areas. A large chunk of the building will not be stuck in our urban centres. There is an opportunity for younger people to get involved in training. Not only that but rather than finding themselves having to drive to Dublin, Cork, Galway or wherever, they will be able to have a long-term stable career in retrofitting and live in whatever part of the country they want.

My colleague talked about technological change. At a general level, the rate of technological change in the building sector is no different from the rate of change across all other sectors, for example, medical diagnostics and computers. Even today, I am seeing across various spectrums new technologies coming in from mainland Europe for retrofitting or, for example, coating odd buildings that are not normal in respect of retrofitting. What we are doing today and what we will be doing in three or ten years' time will be quite different.