Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 July 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Housing and Retrofitting: Discussion

Mr. Jim Gannon:

I remarked on this earlier twice because this is so important in terms of the opportunity that resides in the 9% which is publicly owned stock such as local authorities and publicly funded stock such as the approved housing bodies. We might deal with between 30 and 40 landlords but there is access to 150,000 homes, and thereby we can examine the inventory, plan how to upgrade it over ten years and access it. During a downturn, we could turn up the public stock. If that public stock is a backbone, it is possible to execute the type of contract which guarantees a contractor a particular amount of work in an area in return for which the contractor needs to recruit the additional number of homes. That could be used as leverage to decrease costs, to get more social activity around it, and to create the economic case through sheer scale.