Mr. Declan Daly:

As Ms Coyle has referenced every deep retrofit has to have a forced ventilation system because one has to get the air tightness down to a certain level. Once that is done it is best practice to put in demand control or heat recovery ventilation.

The Energiesprong system is usually a factory system and all of the panels and the system are made off site and shipped to the site. Normally one would need to have a whole street to sign up to it . Perhaps it would suit social housing more than the private market, and there is also the skilled workforce and labour required to do it.

On switching grants from shallow to deep retrofit, we have found that many people pick the low hanging fruit. They pick the shallow retrofits. When the difficult conversations come around on switching from fossil fuels or putting on solar panels are the high cost options. The shallow retrofit costs in the region of €3,000 but once the homeowner does that it makes it difficult for the likes of us at the coalface to go out to the homeowners and convince them to do the difficult things such as the windows, the heat pump or the external cladding, which are the expensive works. There are contractors who cherrypick the easy or low hanging fruit.

It is prohibiting the deep retrofit in the future. It has to be a one-stop shop system with the house done completely and not requiring coming back to it in 20 or 30 years time.

Our contractors were more than happy to build the skills but the uncertainty of the deep retrofit programme caused an issue. As it is done in a three or four-month window, they have to let people go or divert them to public buildings which require different skills. To bring market costs down, we have a SuperHomes approved contractor system. All of our contractors go through a process. The first few only do one to five jobs in the first year. Once they have those done, we approve them for 30 to 50 jobs. Those contractors have the skills to do a deep retrofit.

Not all contractors have the skills to do thermal bridging, air tightness or know how to install a heat pump properly. They are used to oil or gas boiler fitting which means it is a different skill for which they need to train.

We are the one-stop shop, the point of contact for a homeowner. We bring them through all the process. We re-assure them they are spending the money correctly and we avail of the grants through the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI. Ventilation is important as mould and dampness can lead to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, in older housing stock.