Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The reason I asked, and it is the fault of nobody in this room, is that, increasingly, I have heard from more than one local authority that the money they get from the State does not pay and they have reduced the amount of retrofitting they are doing directly because of the increase in building costs and all the rest of it. It is much less achievable for them to reach the targets than it would have been three or four years ago. It is useful to get a sense of that because it is one thing I tend to pursue. I have a parliamentary question here that says for the EERP programme, the local authorities are asked to ensure the average cost per home drawn down on the scheme is approximately €36,500, but I imagine that probably involves different things like heat pumps. On the actual wrap element to that, I am not sure what it is. It is a useful piece of information because it is an issue.

An awful lot of older homes in urban areas of city centres that would have probably low energy efficiency would be the type that were built as labourers' cottages and things like that. Some of these would be in areas of architectural protection. They would not necessarily be protected buildings but they would be in areas of architectural protection. I ask this because I have come across people in areas such as this who might have dormer windows because they are small buildings. Maybe 30 or 40 years ago somebody might have felt they needed a bit of extra space, dormer windows were put in, and because of that, they have come up against difficulties with SEAI. Do the witnesses have a comment on that? I might have picked up a hint of Cork accent there from Brian. I might be wrong on that. However, for anyone who is familiar with Cork, it is in areas such as Albert Road, Evergreen Street, Barrack Street and places like that, where there are these sorts of buildings that are well over 100 years old, and 120 or 130 years old in some cases. They would have been built as bungalows as cottages but they have dormer windows. I understand it is very difficult to get these retrofitted because of the cost of them, and the dormer windows, some of which may have been built 30 years, might not be of a great quality and that probably causes an exposure to cold.

The difficulty in making that energy efficient is probably considerable.