Mr. Tom Halpin:

The Senator is conflating two points I made. I said I have no sense of what the additional costs are and I do not know their order of magnitude. That is a matter for the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. We do not own or apply the building regulations. It is a matter for the Department. The €40,000 amount is for retrofitting, which is upgrading a house when undertaking renovations. I have no sense of the additional cost between building a house under the existing building regulations, which would have a high energy performance, and building one under the nearly zero energy building standard, nZEB, that will be introduced under the new regulations next year. To use the figure of €40,000 as an impact on affordability is to conflate two points.