Mr. Seamus Hoyne:

I will come in on the district heating component. District heating is a system designed for heating multiple heat loads in residential and non-residential public buildings. On balance, the district heating systems I have seen across Europe are equally used to heat traditional or heritage buildings as they can be in more modern buildings. That is down to sensible design.

In some cases, low-temperature district heating and low-temperature heating within a traditional or heritage building is the ideal heating provision. In some cases, this need not be more expensive than fossil fuel heating provision. This is because we are providing a small amount of heat into those buildings at low levels over a constant period, which tends to suit those types of buildings rather than the cycling of temperature changes within them. There is no technical reason why these types of buildings cannot be connected to district heating. It can certainly fit in as one of the heat loads in an overall system.

As was mentioned, PV is becoming a standard across Europe. In a recent meeting I had with the European Commission, it was stated that we should be able to drive around in a number of years and look at buildings that do not have PV and try to figure out why that is the case, as opposed to now where we look at buildings and say it is amazing that they have PV. Depending on planning, as well as aesthetic and other reasons, there is no technical reasons why PV cannot be applied to these types of buildings.

The embodied carbon issue is certainly one about which we need more knowledge and capacity building in the country. Even in academic circles, there are a limited number of people with expertise in the area. We are developing education programmes in that space. We need the tools and legislative mechanisms to drive the industry to require that. The challenge is trying to do it on top of the huge retrofitting programme we have.

In the evolution of products and the evolution of knowledge in embodied carbon, as was mentioned, we can learn a massive amount from the UK where they are more advanced in that knowledge. I am certainly not an expert on the subject matter. We are working on another project on green procurement that looks at low embodied carbon solutions for green roofs and other systems, for example. There is a lot of knowledge across Europe. How we apply that in Ireland and how we procure those types of systems are pieces of the system we have to upgrade.

As for the comment made about the help-to-renovate scheme, the principle of it seems to be a good one to pursue. The ideal solution for building owners who fit within those brackets is that they can take advantage of individual supports, such as one from the Heritage Council and one from the SEAI, as well as from other sources. Sometimes they can be in conflict, in that if a person gets one support, he or she cannot get the other or they do not line up in series. Collective discussion across the various Departments might find a solution whereby the help-to-renovate scheme could be supported and enabled through various funding schemes across Government channels.