Dr. Oliver Kinnane:

It is the airtightness and insulation value as well. It is the thermal resistance of the home. We are doing quite an involved in-use heat pump monitoring study for the SEAI and we are seeing very high coefficient performance for heating. Domestic hot water supply from the heat pump is what drops the coefficient of performance but we are still talking about coefficient of performance indices of 3 or 4, which is much better than a gas boiler will ever be, as it will remain at less than 1. There is still an awful lot of work to be done on heat pumps and finding the optimum strategy but having more heat pumps for a wider range of homes is important and more grant access is important also.