Mr. Robert Deegan:

Yes. He launched the report. We were involved, as were the SEAI and officials from the Department of heritage. Those guidelines are in place now and we have asked the SEAI to work out what changes to the schemes will be required. In the first instance, we are probably going to pilot something because we need to make sure that what we do is correct. If things go wrong with a traditional building and we do the wrong thing, they can go badly wrong. There is no NSAI Agrément certified wall insulation available that I am aware of and they are the technologies that are supported through the SEAI. If there are innovative products that we need to consider, we will keep in touch with the SEAI in that regard. There is a set of guidelines there now that we can move on from.

I presume those gentlemen were visited by contractors under the warmer homes scheme. That scheme has a list of measures and contractors will not do wall measures because there is not an approved technology for that. However, they should look at things like attic insulation, as the Senator said herself. It could be the case that the home already had attic insulation. I am not sure of the specific circumstances but if the Senator wants to give us the details, we can follow up with the SEAI and see what the story is in that case.

There is going to be a real focus on traditional buildings because we need to have solutions for every consumer cohort and every housing type. I mentioned that we are doing work on apartments. The traditional building stock is a big cohort of houses that we cannot leave behind. We cannot leave the rental sector behind either. We are going to have to use different strategies to address these different sectors and that is an absolute focus for the Department.

Senator Garvey mentioned the need for prioritisation and I am happy to report that we have introduced prioritisation under the warmer homes scheme. Once applicants get through the initial threshold of satisfying the criterion of being in receipt of certain social welfare payments, the next stage is the BER. If the dwelling gets a BER of E, F, or G, it will be prioritised because it is in the worst-performing home category. Homes with a BER of E, F or G are the worst-performing homes and they are prioritised by the SEAI.

On the energy kits, what the Senator said is the first negative thing I have heard about them, other than a lack of availability. That is certainly something we can feed back. They have been very well received according to the feedback we have heard.