Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

To follow up on procurement, one very concrete proposal is my own legislation which has just finished in the Seanad. The Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, has been quite supportive of it. It provides for a price quality approach in respect of procurement, creating an obligation to have consideration for quality as well as price in determining public contracts. That creates a space. As Deputy Bruton mentioned, simply having guidance has been shown to be insufficient. Mr. Armstrong himself mentioned that it was only with the introduction of the near-zero energy requirements that we saw a jump from 50% to 80% in terms of heat pumps. It is very clear we need regulation in this area and strong measures, not simply guidance or example.

Mr. Armstrong mentioned a number of areas that are not in his remit. What are the plans for upgrading regulation and statutory instruments in respect of building? There is Part L in terms of energy and Part B in respect of fire safety. We are missing guidance in respect of demolition, which has been mentioned by a number of committee members. Not only does demolition contribute to substantial embodied emissions being released, it is also front-loading the release of embodied emissions within the period that is most precious for action in the next five to ten years. Mr. Armstrong mentioned that planning on demolition was not in his remit. I refer to strengthening regulations in respect of demolition and raising the bar regarding the use of demolition versus retrofitting, extension or renovation.

Another area I note to be missing a little bit, even in terms of the energy analysis, is regulations in respect of light, by which I mean access to natural daylight. Compact growth has been pitched as a sustainability measure but sometimes without the necessary measures. When we engaged with the European Commission, it identified access to daylight as the key component because it affects the amount of energy usage in any given dwelling. What measures are there for strengthening regulations in new buildings and in terms of the impact of new buildings on access to daylight in existing buildings?

To follow up on the question of embodied energy, Mr. Armstrong mentioned accounting a lot. I was not clear about what is actually happening in terms of having an accounting system in place for embodied energy. What is the timeline and where is it at? It is happening already in many countries.

Last year, Denmark introduced a requirement that all buildings under 1,000 sq. m would need life-cycle reporting. All buildings over 1,000 sq. m would have to have a limit on the amount of embodied energy that is allowed to be involved in that project and building. Is that something we are looking at? Are we looking at the French model or the Dutch model? Five or six countries already have proper regulation for embodied energy. What is the witnesses' view on how important it is to ensure that the embodied energy release from demolition is included when we account for the embodied energy? That is why I was a little concerned when the witnesses mentioned starting with new buildings and learning from that, because existing buildings are key. That was the other thing that was mentioned with regard to accounting. As well as accounting for the positive measures such as heat pumps and so on, many members have been asking how the baseline is measured to ensure that we can show there has been an improvement. Reporting on tonnage will not simply involve adding a set of minuses for good things the Department has done but will have to be set alongside the pluses for everything else that is built. Ireland is in a particular situation where it has committed to massive building work in the next five years under Housing for All. Is it not important that we front-load the best standards in that?

Lastly, local authorities and public buildings were mentioned. The target of 36,500 units for social housing is very low. If 500,000 is our objective for retrofitting and less than 10% of that is for social housing, why are we not front-loading retrofitting in all public buildings? Literally any building to which the State has access should surely be front-loaded for retrofitting, because our aim is not just to create a retrofitting industry but to have as many buildings retrofitted as early as possible. It would seem that this is an area where, if anything, action should be front-loaded on the public side because it takes longer to create demand on the private side.