Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the presentations. Will the witnesses give us some of the numbers, in terms of the embodied carbon in a standard three-bedroom home or wherever, that one would save being expended by going for reconstruction, refurbishment and renewal, versus site clearance and starting from scratch? One of the difficulties is that embodied carbon is not on our inventory and many of our international obligations do not refer to it. However it would be useful for us to know, in terms of framing subsidies, what the embodied carbon value is and whether that could be factored in some way into the policy design.

Mr. Hoyne made the point about the risk of overspecification in terms of the spec we have for heat pumps. I wonder, given the gaps in our knowledge and our current capacity, whether this is a more general issue of a tendency to go for overspecification of what should be done in one visit to a building, instead of trying to do all the shallow retrofits early with the capacity we have. I know Grace Park Heights in my constituency does not have great insulation. One could go in and do a shallow retrofit, put in heat controls and try to do the whole estate at once with the capacity we have. Given the state of knowledge and what Mr. Hoyne has said, should we be doing that as an alternative to having one visit and getting the absolute premium product done in one session?

In terms of the scale of labour and the professional, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, said he is planning to spend €8 billion over a decade. That would be matched to become €16 billion over a decade. If we are talking about €2 billion to €3 billion per annum, that is only less than 1% of GDP. Is it really that great a challenge for us to free up the capacity to do that? I know it is coming at a time when we are trying to push house building to levels at which it has not been for years but are we overstating the challenge of capacity? Mr. Hoyne has been close to the ground in Tipperary to try to do this. I am very interested in the refurbishment-demolition balance and what we should do to nudge towards refurbishment.