Mr. John McCarthy:

We will complete phase 1 of the retrofitting programme between this year and next year. We will then move to phase 2, on which we have been through some pilot work, but we must do some further work on it before we roll it out.

In regard to the audit, we are working on the basis that, as we roll out phase 2, we will need to target those which are oldest on the clear assumption they are the poorest energy performers. As I said to Senator Lombard earlier, we estimate that approximately 30% of social housing stock, as it stands, is more than 40 years old, which would equate to approximately 40,000 units. They will be our priority for phase 2, albeit not exclusively because there will be areas where there will be mixed areas where there will be some newer buildings also. Therefore, it may make economic sense to be flexible. The timeline for completing a phase 2 retrofitting on those older houses will be determined by the programme of funding we have available over the following years. On the basis that it has taken us six years to do phase 1, which is a much lighter programme of work, for approximately 60,000, it will be a programme of a number of years to be able to do phase 2 on those priority houses.