Mr. Se?n Armstrong:

There are many questions but I am happy to go at it. Regarding future plans for reviews of the building regulations, we are carrying out a review of the performance requirements for both near zero energy buildings, NZEB, and major renovations to the cost optimal level or to a B2 energy rating. That is a large calculation. It takes a set of typical new buildings, both residential and non-residential, and typical existing buildings, and a 30-year life cycle costing assessment is done to identify what the optimum energy performance is for the lowest life cycle cost, taking account of both capital costs and operational costs, because the industry would not necessarily take account of both those items. We identify the optimal energy performance over that 30-year period, taking account of discount rates, the price of carbon and the maintenance and energy bills associated with the specific energy packages applied, then we identify the new cost-optimal performance requirements. Those will be published in the second or third quarter of this year. We are then required to update our building regulation requirements to take account of those new cost-optimal performance requirements. The energy performance of buildings directive states we should do it within five years of the publication of the requirements, which would be by 2028. The climate action plan 2023 commits to reviewing our building regulations in 2025, three years ahead of the energy performance of buildings directive's requirement.

Regarding demolition, as I mentioned earlier, there is current planning guidance and conditions to take account of existing buildings and the reuse of existing buildings. I take the point that it is more than that. It is about the embodied carbon in the existing buildings. As was discussed earlier, to do a quantitative analysis of it, we need the accounting frameworks to be in place to assess the carbon impact of existing buildings and to compare it to the construction of new buildings. While we can do it in a qualitative way currently, in order to do a proper scientific analysis, we need the embodied carbon frameworks to be in place, which brings us on to the question of the timelines for embodied carbon frameworks and what needs to be done to introduce embodied carbon frameworks.

There are two elements to an embodied carbon accounting framework. One is the calculation methodology, where one takes the volume of different materials in a building, including concrete, timber, roof tiles, insulation materials and steel, each of which has embodied carbon emissions assigned to it, and one multiplies the kilograms of carbon dioxide by the total volume of that element, adds those up and gets the total embodied carbon emissions from the building. In order to do that, we need the calculation methodology, which is a software tool that is being developed at a European level. The tool is called Level(s). It exists in a document format at a European level. Software manufacturers can develop software in accordance with that specification that is being developed at a European level. Software tools are available which can be adopted. As a Government or as Ireland, we need to look at those software tools, identify which is most appropriate for use in Ireland, give responsibility to a body in Ireland for manufacturing that software tool, train people to use that tool, assess them, register them-----