Dr. Ciaran Byrne:

Unfortunately, one could not not hear it. We talked at the beginning of this meeting about inflation. Talking about 100% sounds great and that we will just pay for it. First, there was a scheme in England that did just that. One of the biggest limitations of the 100% grant was to get people to clear their attics. They set up a charity to help people clear their attics to go and get the thing done. The other thing about 100% grants is that it is highly likely that we will end up driving inflation in the scheme. While one talks about 100%, it sounds great in theory but it will end up just costing the taxpayer and the State more in terms of what is done.

There have been various ideas on how we build scale on our schemes and we are trying to balance out building the scale of the schemes with the governance requirements we have. We talked earlier in this meeting that we are spending significant amounts of Exchequer funding on giving grants to homeowners and we have to ensure that they are done at the right level and quality. These are issues we have to consider and they certainly impact on how one delivers at scale.

I will hand over to my colleague, Dr. Brian O'Mahony, who may want to make a comment on the 100% grant issue which he has looked into.