Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have two very quick follow-up questions. The first of these is in relation to windows. I ask that the witnesses please forgive me for my non-technical phraseology. On the basis that the assessment needs to be made on a case-by-case basis for each property, and given that the air seal is probably one of the most important aspects, can a retrofit be successful in sealing up a property and in ensuring the thermal values of a given property that was built before 2011 are high enough to support the effective use of a heat pump?

Can window taping be simply enough in a context that is specific to the windows, assuming there are reasonable seals on their openable parts? Can this be a solution? There is a level of technical expertise that is needed to evaluate a property. On that basis, from a homeowner’s perspective, is being aware of thermal bridging or of cold bridging at a window, and-or air intake as a result of a poor seal, part of the solution?

My second question is in relation to the data, or to the lack thereof. Is there an opportunity for us to task the one-stop shops? Would they have the expertise to do this? Could we task them through the home retrofitting scheme, or the deep retrofitting scheme, to begin an evaluation that would assist us in improving the scheme and targeting it where we need to go? Rather than just saying there is no source of information and we will let academia sort it out for us, we could be the driver of that data analysis and what it could mean for future schemes.