Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 July 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Housing and Retrofitting: Discussion

Mr. Jim Gannon:

This is commonly referred to in energy retrofitting as the split incentive problem where a landlord finds it challenging to justify putting capital into a home where the tenant might be the ultimate beneficiary of the investment. There is an energy saving that the tenant will not have to pay any more but the landlord will put the capital in. It is not something where a solution is apparent in Europe. There is a lot of work ongoing on this. The European Commission in particular is involved. We are understanding of it and it is part of the cross-Government action plan to look at that. There are two different types, with the commercial proposition very much different from the housing and home definition. I can provide further detail on this.