Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Pauline O'Reilly. I want to pick up on the heat pumps. Mr. Hoyne mentioned a fair point. When we are talking about retrofitting, one-stop shops and all of the various workers who are needed to facilitate the volume of retrofitting, a fair point was made that some of the contractors are trained by the manufacturers of many of those products, independently of a national training programme. This is something we should consider when we talk about the retrofitting scheme.

Reference was made to the apprenticeships and the need for those. It is incumbent on all of us in the Oireachtas to ensure that we encourage more apprenticeships. This has not been done for quite some time. I was at an event yesterday where this was being done. We need to see more of that to encourage people to take up apprenticeships.

On the one-stop shops specifically, from our perspective and given the popularity of the retrofitting scheme, it has been oversubscribed. There is an inability to respond to the volume of queries. Mr. Hoyne mentioned the assessors. I already have had contact from people who are unhappy with assessors' reports and want a mechanism by which to feed back in to try to liaise or negotiate certain elements. Specifically, these are issues around older buildings and how to retrofit those. Some of those buildings present certain challenges, as I am sure Mr. Hoyne would appreciate. How does Mr. Hoyne believe we can get around that? Straightforward projects may, for example, be the semi-detached home that was built in the 1950s and the 1960s. When one goes back further than that, and the other witnesses were talking about the 1930s and 1940s buildings, it presents a challenge. The low-hanging fruit is straightforward but I would welcome Mr. Hoyne's views on the more complex buildings.

In his contribution Mr. Hoyne pointed to the pipeline and the guarantee of work. There is a guarantee here for companies that specialise in the area of retrofitting, given the investment. Also in his opening statement, Mr. Hoyne referred to a digital academy for the sustainable built environment and how it was validating programmes on residential energy, retrofitting, management, and energy renovation of traditional buildings. Perhaps Mr. Hoyne will elaborate a little bit on that for us.

I realise that the time remaining to me is zero, and I ask the Chairman for one second please. We could speak about this all day. The inputs and suggestions from Dr. Daly and Dr. Engel Purcell around this are very interesting, including the research project mentioned in their opening statement, which was the Climate Heritage Network, HiCLIP, study of nine different countries and 17 thematic activities. Perhaps the witnesses might elaborate on that for us please. If they could send a note on to the committee, that would be of interest to us.