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

I thank the witnesses from Friends of the Earth and the Irish Cancer Society. They have really added to what I think has been an excellent set of sessions.

A lot of the same themes have arisen and I will be as succinct as I can.

The ICS has made very logical and coherent recommendations and it would be hard to argue with them. Regarding the recommendation about the SEAI, obviously it is not the case that people with life-limiting forms of cancer are prioritised. I am extremely sympathetic to the very logical recommendation given the situation in which people find themselves. The last thing ill people want to be thinking about is how much bills will cost and having to make decisions about whether to heat the house. Has contact been made with the SEAI and has the authority explored whether it is possible to prioritise in that regard?

On a related issue, the Department of Social Protection for good and for bad, but often for good, can create challenges. It likes criteria and rules that are strict, comprehensible and easily applicable. Is it the case, and it may well be as I am not familiar enough to know, that it is easy to define what is life limiting? Will the witnesses please expand on that?

I have a few questions for the Friends of the Earth on topics that have arisen. On the approach that has been taken, heat pumps are a huge part of the ball game. However, there is no point installing heat pumps in a house that is single leaf block on edge, and has old, single-glazed windows, bad doors, no roof insulation, etc. Everything must move forward in unison and it sort of moves a little bit slowly. It is coherent and makes sense that we get the biggest bang for our buck for heat pumps in houses that have a good standard of energy efficiency other than a heat pump. Is there an interim solution? Can anything be done for the people who are not going to be reached in the next four or five years? Is it the case that we simply must reach the maximum number of people in the next four or five years?

I want to flag an issue but I do not know whether it comes up with the witnesses, as I have gotten different versions from local authorities. I have heard from some local authorities that the cost of retrofitting is more than what they get from the Government per unit at this stage in the game because the funding has not kept pace with the cost of construction inflation so the only cost-effective thing to do is large blocks of local authority apartments as there would be an economy of scale. A row of houses or even five or six houses on a street or one-off houses is not cost-effective and there is an issue with the funding that local authorities get that has slowed down the delivery of housing. To some extent, the big urban authorities have hit the low-hanging fruit, not all by any means, but a lot of the local authority apartment complexes have been started.

My final question is on an issue that continually crops up. Some of the poorest quality stock in the country are older private rented buildings. That is hard to address because as we have talked about, and rightly, the onus is on the individual. In those circumstances the onus is, to some extent, on the landlord so what is the incentive? The issue is whether the tenant even wants to pursue it. We. therefore, need a tenant that is interested, sympathetic landlords and a co-operative relationship, and even then the landlord needs to accepts that this is a worthwhile investment for a tenancy that might only last a year or two or whatever. That is a big challenge because an awful lot of people are on very low incomes or in receipt of HAP and so on are in the private rental sector.