Mr. Pat Barry:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to present to it this afternoon. We recognise the vital importance of its work. Construction and the built environment are responsible for over a third of Ireland's emissions, which is more or less the same as in agriculture.

On the basis of figures from 2018 and 2019, two thirds of these emissions are operational in nature and one third are the embodied carbon emissions associated with construction, maintenance, and demolition. Despite recent progress, the built environment is the only sector where emissions increased in 2024 after falling in some previous years. With 300,000 homes and associated infrastructure to be built in the next decade, we need ambitious, co-ordinated policies to meet our targets.

We group our recommendations under three key headings. We need to maximise what we have through the use of vacant and derelict buildings in our towns and cities. We welcome the recent progress, such as the introduction of the vacant home scheme and vacant homes officers, but we need far more urgent action to make a real difference in eliminating vacancy and dereliction.

Renovating and adapting buildings has a quarter of the impact of a new build. Homes delivered from existing buildings are not as dependent on building new costly infrastructure, such as that relating to water, energy and transportation. This approach also represents an opportunity to speed up housing delivery. For this to happen at scale, we need to improve and expand upon those Government initiatives that are working and develop new schemes to tackle more complex vacancies. These include: amending the vacant homes grant to make it available for each home created from a building rather just per building; introducing feasibility study grants for more complex projects; making businesses eligible for support for the reuse of above-the-shop units; reviewing the building regulations and the technical guidance documents relating to them in order to support the adaptation of vacant buildings for residential use should be reviewed; and creating multidisciplinary teams should within local authorities to accelerate this. Even with grants, building owners still do not know where to start, what to do or how to navigate issues with planning and building regulations.

The EU’s new energy performance of buildings directive is another opportunity as it requires the establishment of energy renovation information hubs by 2026. This will provide the Government with an opportunity to establish multidisciplinary teams and support the reuse of vacant and derelict buildings and high-quality renovation.

A second key point on the transition to more resource-efficient buildings and infrastructure is that all new buildings must not only be energy efficient, they must also designed to reduce carbon emissions at all life stages, including embodied carbon. We need to ensure that the infrastructure serving them is also highly carbon and resource efficient. By focusing on the compact growth of our urban centres when it comes to new development, we can reduce transport emissions and leverage that existing infrastructure, hence reducing the quantity of infrastructure needed to deliver homes. This would speed up delivery and reduce both the cost the public purse and carbon emissions.

There is an urgent need to review existing infrastructure standards for roads, pavements and drainage to support a reduction in carbon emissions. An example in this regard is that constructing a typical Uisce Éireann-compliant manhole can generate the same carbon emissions as heating a new home for an entire year.

Other steps we can take in transitioning to more resource-efficient buildings include putting water-efficiency requirements for homes - such as water-efficient taps and showers - in the building regulations. This is cost neutral and will improve the capacity of our existing water infrastructure and help meet climate change targets. We suggest introducing embodied carbon limits ahead of the requirements of the energy performance of buildings directive because this will help build the capacity of the industry. It will also help us move faster. Where this has been done in other countries, it has accelerated the bringing to market of new, low-embodied carbon materials and systems. In simple terms, reducing embodied carbon emissions means being smarter about how we design buildings. It means making more efficient use of resources to deliver the same or greater quality for less cost and emissions.

The other key area is getting new low carbon construction materials to the market quickly. In addition to the immediate implementation of the recommendations of the timber in construction steering group, Ireland has a large agriculture sector and is well placed to develop low-carbon, bio-based construction materials from agricultural byproducts, such as straw, grass, wool, and hemp. This is an opportunity to help farmers diversify and boost their incomes while supporting the sector to cut emissions.

On support the supply side, we need to support the introduction of low-embodied carbon materials into the Irish market by removing regulatory barriers and streamlining the certification process for innovative materials. On the demand side, the development of a market for low-embodied carbon can be supported through public procurement policy. The model of the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine’s timber in construction steering group must be replicated beyond timber to drive the development of a bio-based sector.

We have made great progress since 2018, but with 300,000 homes and associated infrastructure to be delivered by 2030, addressing embodied carbon must be urgently prioritised. We need to maximise the use of vacant and derelict buildings in our towns and cities. We need to transition to much more resource-efficient buildings and infrastructure, including through the introduction of water-efficiency measures. We also need to support low-carbon construction materials getting to the market. We thank the members once again for the invitation to inform their work.