Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 5 April 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Implementation of the New National Retrofit Plan: Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland

Dr. Ciaran Byrne:

I will take the first question. I will break it down into two parts, what I describe as a before and after. Before is before the war in Ukraine and after is the last 40 days. In launching the one-stop shops we had a significant amount of market and behavioural analysis and also quantity surveying of our schemes and looking at that, as well as discussing with the contractors, the prospective OSSs, their capability and capacity to deliver, looking at the market ability and looking at the schemes in existence. We mentioned the national home retrofit pilot scheme, which would have given us many lessons. We built all of that into the schemes. We built inflation at a certain level into the scheme as was. It would be fair and reasonable to say that the world has shifted in the last 40 days. There were already concerns about inflation and the supply chain prior to the start of February and they have absolutely accelerated. We are looking again at the schemes in terms of quantity surveying and understanding where we are now, having built them in. It is moving very fast so we are in that space at present.

I will ask Mr. Walsh to comment on the EV scheme. I can do retrofitting buildings, but not retrofitting EVs.