Mr. Robert Deegan:

Some of those matters relate more to the housing side. I will first make a more general comment about the interlinked nature of these issues. We need to be careful we tackle each one and come up with a comprehensive and overarching approach to achieving our objectives. If we were to focus on increasing demand and increasing access to finance without having access to the skills and training, and those kinds of things, we would effectively increase the unit cost and not achieve the carbon targets or the energy efficiency targets. Many of the issues we are talking about today can be siloed off but they need to come together into a cohesive approach.

On the issues in regard to the financing models, as Mr. Gannon mentioned earlier, a lot of work has been undertaken in this area over a number of years. We are not wedded to any particular approach. Whatever approach we take, each will be evaluated and we will be looking at the approach that best meets the objectives we have been set. We will also need to look at how the financing schemes and the grant schemes interact. Again, they have to be seen as a cohesive whole as opposed to just looking at the finance in isolation from the grants. A lot of the research that has been published in this area, much of it done by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, has shown the importance and the interlinked nature of finance products and grants, and the fact grants might reduce the effective interest rate that is being paid, while still needing to have an attractive low interest rate to drive the demand for the finance product.

In terms of the discussions on the training aspect, one of the great things about an all-of-Government climate plan is that it is bringing all of the relevant players around the table, so it is a genuinely all-of-Government approach to tackling an all-of-Government problem. There has been engagement between the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and the Department of Education and Skills. We are looking at a number of players, including the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government in regard to standards, the Department of Education and Skills and SOLAS in terms of training and apprenticeships, and the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation in terms of having the businesses there as well, so we will be able to scale up to the level of retrofit activity that is planned for the future.

One issue in terms of training is that much of the activity has been at the shallow end of the retrofit scale and there are many people with the expertise to do that kind of work. It is about upskilling those people for the deeper end and for the more scientific and engineering approaches that will be required, as was alluded to earlier. For example, plumbing is one area as we need plumbers with specialist expertise for the types of interventions we are talking about. I believe that covers the aspects involving my Department unless there other issues. Mr. Armstrong might address the issue of regulations.